In 2020, there were 212 fatalities in civil aviation activities, with 205 of them under the category of General Aviation (GA). Additionally, 17 out of 23 GA accidents were weather-related. To mitigate this issue, researchers have employed XR technologies to improve GA weather education and training for pilots. However, since the created XR content only contains limited pre-defined scenarios, it is unable to address the wide range of weather-related conditions a GA pilot will encounter. Thus, a gap exists between what instructors need and the tools available to them. Flight instructors with expertise in aviation weather could create more, and varied scenarios, but they most likely do not have the XR development knowledge required (i.e., computer graphics and coding). Alternatively, developers who routinely create XR content often have little knowledge about aviation weather. A simple to use XR authoring tool is needed to allow customized educational content to be created by aviation weather instructors.

Formal interviews of flight instructors were conducted to understand a range of issues such as desired educational outcomes, features, and instructor technical competencies before software development began. Based on interviews, requirements were developed for an authoring tool to develop customizable weather-related flight scenarios (i.e., clouds, precipitation, high winds) to practice pilots’ decision-making. The authoring tool was implemented with a modular thunderstorm cloud model (i.e., particle systems with customized graphics shaders) and provides instructors features to control duration, elevation, and size. In addition, the tool enables authoring in 2D with a 3D visual preview that non-graphics experts can readily understand. To enhance usability, the authoring tool provides customizable layers of mesh models, textual overlays, and adjustments for position and orientation to create clear visual time-based scenarios of weather-related flying activities. The tool was evaluated by flight instructors on a range of measures with overall very positive results.