The pilot in the aircraft constantly experiences various forces on the body that shape the pilot's "control behavior". These forces provide cues, consciously and unconsciously, about the accelerations of the aircraft resulting from pilot control input, aircraft operation, and the environment. In a static simulator, these cues are not present. As the use of training devices increases for distributed mission training and combat rehearsal, the contribution of force cueing needs to be established to ensure that the combat pilot's behavior and performance in the simulator will be as close as possible to that in the aircraft.

A study conducted for the US Air Force by SIMTEC, Inc., Manassas VA, concluded that the effectiveness of potential force cueing devices could be best determined by conducting operational evaluations in a mission context using experienced instructor pilots. The Air Force has successfully performed similar operational evaluations of visual combat simulators, under the "Vis-Eval" program. The study recognized that force cueing effects are much more subtle and harder to isolate than visual cues and, therefore, would be more difficult to evaluate. Because of this difficulty, and the fact that pilots may be unaware of changes in their control strategy in the simulator, it was essential that the force cueing evaluation be based largely on objective measures.

This concept was tested and refined at the Flight Control Simulation Facility of the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright Patterson AFB. The evaluation system included an F-15 cockpit, visual simulation, a dynamic seat, an anti-g suit, and COMBAT EDGE. A trial evaluation using operational pilots was conducted. This paper will describe the evaluation procedures and the results of the trial evaluation as well as future force cueing evaluation concepts.