Collins Aerospace unveils new Arcus image generator

The new Collins Aerospace Arcus image generator displayed at I/ITSEC 2023. (Giles Ebbutt)

Collins Aerospace, an RTX business, has developed a new image generator (IG) called Arcus and launched it in November at the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) 2023 in Orlando.

Lance Moss, product programme manager, synthetic environments for Collins, told Janes that Arcus combines the capabilities of Epic Games' Unreal Engine with Collins proprietary rendering and processing tools to provide a hybrid solution that offers realistic, complex synthetic training environments with multichannel synchronisation, edge blending, and multiple light ports.

According to Collins, Arcus has been designed with a flexible, open systems architecture. Using common PC hardware and software applications – including the OpenXR protocol – it supports a variety of simulated flight devices including full-flight simulators, flight training devices, and headset virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality (MR) systems.

Arcus is currently at about Technology Readiness Level (TRL) six or seven, and it would be ready for release in the first quarter of 2024, Moss said. The system would be available for full mission flight simulators in late 2024 or early 2025, he said.

Moss noted that Arcus was not yet under contract but it had been proposed to a number of possible customers, both domestic and foreign, for fixed-wing simulators.