John Melley: Welcome to the VR Flight World Podcast, the place where flight training and your home office collide. Get tips, tricks and in depth interviews about flight training, virtual reality and flight simulation. With your host Dan Caston.

Dan Caston: Hey guys, and welcome to episode number seven of the VR Flight World Podcast. Today on our show, we have a very experienced guest that has been involved in flight simulation for a very long time. He is now flying in VR and is always showing off his flights on YouTube. His online name is Bel Geode. Please welcome Drew Bolton. Hey Drew. Welcome to the VR Flight World Podcast. I’m glad to have you hear. Some of the audience may know who you are. However, for the people that don’t really know you, can you just introduce yourself and let us know a little bit about you?

Drew Bolton: Absolutely. Probably the best way that I can do that, the most recognizable way would be to say good evening everybody. This is Bel Geode.

Dan Caston: How long have you been in VR flight or actually flight sim in general?

Drew Bolton: Well VR flight is, I guess you would say, relatively new. I only really got into it last year, July, shortly after I came back from FlightSimCon in Connecticut. Flight siming itself I’ve been doing since, believe it or not, about 1986 when I was in high school.

Dan Caston: Oh wow, nice.

Drew Bolton: I’m one of those guys, yeah.

Dan Caston: You’ve been doing it a while. That’s awesome.

Drew Bolton: Yes.

Dan Caston: I mentioned before that you actually did some real world flying. You did some hours as a real world pilot or a student pilot I guess?

Drew Bolton: Yes.

Dan Caston: Was that before or after you were in flight sim?

Drew Bolton: It was technically after. When I was in high school, part of the things that I did there, I was part of the ROTC. The Air Force ROTC in my high school, that was one of the first things they had us do was they introduced us to flight simulation back at a time when it was just vector graphics. It really didn’t take until many, many years after that, I would say when I was in my mid 30s. I’m currently 47. I got into my mid 30s, the job that I was working at the time allowed me to take flight sim lessons, but unfortunately, since life has a way of throwing curve balls, I ended up losing that job and thus losing the income to take the flight lessons.

Dan Caston: Oh no.

Drew Bolton: I’ve got about four and a half hours total including the half hour that I count at the last convention when a friend of mine had me fly his Cessna around Connecticut.

Dan Caston: Yeah, exactly. You’ve had a little bit of experience in the real plane as well.

Drew Bolton: Oh yes.

Dan Caston: Now that you have some experience in the real plane, you have some experience in VR, do you really have that connection, like it’s very similar or is it completely different to you?

Drew Bolton: Absolutely. It is, as I’ve been telling everybody who will listen, a game changer. Before when you’re flying on a monitor, of course you can get the procedures down, which honestly that’s really what flight simulation is best at is learning all the various procedures. It really doesn’t help as much learning how to actually control the aircraft. Anybody can teach you that, any CFI or flight instructor can actually put you in the cockpit and teach you how to do that in a couple of hours basically. The actual procedures and everything is where flight simulation shines.

Now VR has really blown that out because of the fact that not only do you have the procedure trainer, but you can couple that with the feeling of flying, the fact that you’ve got your depth perception, and that’s probably the biggest thing that VR adds to flight simulation. You can now judge your distances when you’re coming in to land, if you’re flying patterns and so on. It’s just amazing to see the world unfold. You can judge your heights from the ground and so on. It’s just incredible. It’s really, really opened up flight simulation for both the student pilot and the one that’s never even planning on getting into an actual real cockpit.

Dan Caston: Yeah, that’s what I found as well. I have a few hours as a student pilot, but I don’t have too, too many and I don’t have my pilot’s license, but really I found it was really realistic once I threw that headset on. I did some flying before, being in VR, but once I threw that headset on and was flying in VR, it was a whole different world, and I could move my head around to look beside me. I just found it was pretty amazing.

Drew Bolton: Yeah, that’s probably the major thing is the fact that you can move your head around and actually take in the world. Of course, it still feels right now, with the state of VR, like having a scuba mask on your face, which is probably the perfect analogy for me since I used to do scuba diving. Even with that limitation that VR currently has, you still can’t replace that feeling of depth being in there. When I see new people get into the flight sims and of course they might get a little bit nauseous or motion sick, I tell them this is part of the “initiation.” It has to feel like that. You do get used to it after a little while, but VR just basically pays for itself once you get past that stage.<