Imagine being in the role of an instructor who is controlling the virtual environment for a Black Hawk or Chinook flight simulator. Your responsibility is to closely observe the student crew, analyze the performance of critical tasks, and provide feedback during flight and in after-action review. Because this is a high fidelity, full motion, flight simulator, you are likely to experience G-force accelerations in the roll, pitch, and yaw axis as the student crew executes a training mission. With advances in Semi-Automated Forces (SAF), and their integration with flight simulators, complex and elaborate scenarios can now be used to further enhance the realism of a training mission. While the realism can greatly benefit the student(s), it can easily create a challenge for an instructor who needs to seamlessly coordinate and control all the set-up, virtual environment settings, instructions, observations, and feedback required for successful training. Because of this, the need for simplification has become paramount, as well as a focal point, for programs like the Lift Simulator Modernization Program (LSMP) and the Additional Black Hawk Flight Simulator (ABHFS) program.

This paper will discuss the steps taken, by LSMP and ABHFS, to simplify the integrated training environment. As the fidelity of flight simulation continues to climb, the effort to maintain simplicity needs to keep pace. Consequently, this paper will also discuss areas of enhancement that could further improve the simplicity, and ease of operation, of the virtual environment in the high-fidelity, virtual, flight simulator domain.