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Customer
Luftwaffe (German Air Force), on behalf of Carl Zeiss AG, Jena

Project
Upgrade of the 360° fulldome Visual Display Systems of three Tornado Full Mission Simulators at Air Bases Buechel, Jagel and Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo/USA to ten-channel WQXGA-projection.

The successful co-operation with Zeiss AG for the realisation of eight Eurofighter-FMS– and CT-simulators as well as for the Transall FMS collimated VDS-upgrade (all projects for main contractor CAE) was continued with the Full Mission Simulator upgrades of three 360° fulldome Visual Display Systems for the multirole combat aircraft Tornado.
We have been contracted by Zeiss for the design of the upgrade of the Visual Display System based upon ten ZEISS VELVET WQXGA projectors, systems integration including warp & blend as well as installation and calibration using domeprojection.com auto-alignment with semi-automated color calibration.
Special project challenges were – comparable to the Eurofighter FMS upgrades – on the one hand the restricted space inside the 7 meter wide fulldome concerning the large number of projector channels and on the other hand the extreme resolution inside the dome.
After the upgrade, the Tornado pilots are excited about the terrifically raised immersion of the simulation thanks to increased resolution and contrast values, the perfected calibration and the possibility to support realistic night vision by projection of an absolutely black picture. The auto calibration guarantees a drastically reduced maintenance downtime, weekly automated re-calibration to preserve the perfect picture within minutes as well as simplified maintenance in case of hardware trouble.

About PANAVIA TORNADO
The Tornado Full Mission Simulators are currently located at the Air Bases Buechel and Jagel as well as at the German Air Force Flying Training Center (GAFFTC) at the US-Air Force Base in Holloman near Alamogordo (until 2019 according to the German Defense Ministry).