The Potential of Virtual Reality for Aerospace Applications

In the past decade, virtual reality (VR) technologies have become increasingly affordable, flexible, and accessible with the release of consumer versions such as the Oculus Rift or the HTC Vive. The immersive and interactive experiences enabled by this technology offer relevant, innovative use cases and training methods in a wide variety of fields. Therefore, VR is becoming more relevant in many areas outside classic entertainment. These include, for example, medical applications, educational environments, industrial applications, and design applications. In particular, immersive simulations and experiences that would often be too dangerous, expensive, difficult or even impossible to perform can be experienced in a safe environment. In this paper, the potential of VR technologies for different areas of aerospace applications is demonstrated and discussed. A systematic literature review based on the PRISMA guideline is conducted to identify relevant publications and applications from the databases IEEE, ACM, and Scopus. The analysis focuses on identifying various use cases of VR in aerospace research, design, manufacturing, operations, maintenance and education. Furthermore, the benefits, potential challenges and relevant technologies are discussed. This paper is designed to give readers a good overview of the state-of-the-art in VR, focusing on use cases and the potential and challenges, and discussing relevant future scenarios for this application field.