Press Release

Issued by FlightSafety International.

September 30, 2013

FlightSafety International is pleased to announce the introduction of its new generation VITAL 1100 visual system.

“VITAL 1100 offers unprecedented fidelity for a wide variety of uses with full flight simulators and a complete range of other advanced training devices,” said Jon Hester, general manager, visual systems. “Our team of highly qualified engineers and designers developed VITAL 1100 based on customer requirements and the experience gained during more than 44 years of producing the successful series of VITAL visual systems.”

The computational performance of VITAL 1100 is five times greater than that of its popular predecessor, the VITAL X. This significantly enhances training by providing mission-specific imagery with vastly improved scene content and unprecedented levels of detail.

Its ability to deliver exceptional visual realism has already been demonstrated by the integration of VITAL 1100 with a Level D qualified full flight simulator. Hundreds of millions of scene elements are processed every second and presented along with environmental effects such as physics-based weather models of rain, snow and hail that develop and react as they do in the real world. Other unique features include dynamic shadowing and enhanced shading effects. This adds a new dimension to the training environment by providing aircrews with extremely valuable cues and added realism.

VITAL 1100 can provide system resolutions that are well over 20 million pixels for a typical out the window field of view of 200 degrees horizontally. This tremendous increase in resolution capability offers a substantial improvement in visual acuity. Target recognition and identification are greatly enhanced while additional scene resolution is provided by the system's superior high definition microtexture. This gives the viewer the necessary resolution for virtually any altitude and position, whether on short final in a fixed wing aircraft, or during hover/land maneuvering in a rotary wing platform.

The enhanced display management system incorporated into VITAL 1100 reduces life cycle and maintenance costs. While removing the need for manual adjustments and special skill sets, this automatic calibration system also allows utilization of new LED and other display technologies as well as conventional LCoS projectors.

FlightSafety has delivered over 1,000 visual systems and close to 800 simulators and other advanced training devices to date. The simulators and visual systems are part of an integrated training system used throughout the company's network of Learning Centers and by many other leading commercial, government and military organizations worldwide.