In-Flight Refueling VR
- Brand
- US Air Force
- Year
- 2021
- Objective
- Lead Gen & Recruiting
- Industry
- Other
- Mechanic
- Simulation & Strategy
- Platform
- AR & VR
- Agency
- Wildlife
- With
- GSD&M
Objective
GSD&M and the Air Force Recruiting Service built the experience to make recruiting stick with a generation that tunes out short TV spots. Rather than describe the boom operator's job, they wanted visitors to 'The Hangar' tour to feel its precision and pressure firsthand, so the final stop on the tour would leave them impressed enough to hand over their contact information.
Solution
Visitors climb into a pod built to match a boom operator's actual working position and put on a Meta Quest 2 headset, finding themselves prone in the tail of a tanker at 30,000 feet with a 360-degree view of sky and control panel around them. They grab real joysticks and throttle levers to steer the refueling boom toward the aircraft below, while an actual Airman's voice comes in over the radio with approach calls and corrections. A heads-up display and a vibrating seat flag any drift off-course, nudging the player to adjust before contact. The session runs three back-to-back refuelings — an F-35, a B-2, and a C-17 — each one demanding steadier, more precise hands than the last.
- 1
The VR refueling simulator is the final stop on the mobile tour "The Hangar," reached only after visitors have walked through the tour's other interactive stations.
- 2
The player takes a seat in a custom pod built to match the real-world body positioning of an In-Flight Refueling Specialist, puts on a Meta Quest 2 headset, and operates physical joystick and throttle replicas while Leap Motion tracks the player's bare hands in VR.
- 3
Inside the headset the player looks around a 360° refueling workstation with control panels and levers; the surrounding environment changes across the experience's three stages.
- 4
Recorded voices of real Air Force Airmen direct the player by radio through the approach and coupling, while corrective guidance arrives on two channels at once: HUD prompts in the headset and rumble-pak vibration under the seat.
- 5
The player guides a virtual refueling boom through three consecutive stages, each refueling a different aircraft: an F-35, then a B-2, then a C-17, with each stage demanding more precise adjustments than the last. The experience ends after the C-17 stage.
- 6
A related touring version, mounted on the "Born To Fly" trailer, puts the player at a replica KC-135 boom pod to refuel aircraft in flight, including the B-2 Spirit, using the same controller-free physical setup.
- 7
At air shows, the same attraction runs in a 40×40-foot open area where the player picks one of two missions — flying an F-35 or refueling through the KC-135 boom pod replica — then moves on to a registration tent where contact information is collected.
