The vehicles are aircraft in various stages of flight or ground vehicles such as baggage carts, fuel or fire trucks. Authentic headsets, located at each controller, pilot, ramp and operator station, support fully functional simulated radio and interphone communications. A touchscreen panel emulates the panel of switches used to select among a wide array of voice communication channels. Airport background sound effects in the tower add to the operational realism. Several key features combine to create the realism that gives credibility to studies performed in the facility.
Perceptual fidelity is important to permit valid transfer of data to real-world situations.
The busiest airports can be modeled using the computational power provided by 100 Pentium processors, combined with the graphic display capability. Glass panes with support mullions separate the control tower occupants from the screens. The software enables repeat trials under varying conditions such as different times of day, weather conditions, or traffic loads. For example, a new runway could be tried at different locations on the field while applying identical traffic loads to each trial. This is a valuable feature when the goal is to choose between multiple designs or procedures, to perform trade-off studies, or to verify a proposed design by testing under all possible conditions.