Microsoft HoloLens

[Daube]

I understand. You want some kind "hybrid" solution.
Still, the hardware switches will limit your choices. You made a hardware 206 overhead panel, and yes it would be absolutely great if the Hololens could somehow display the virtual overhead on top of your harware. But what if you want to fly another copter with a different overhead panel ?

 

[JimmyRFR]

But what if you want to fly another copter with a different overhead panel ?

Well, with AR, I'd still be able to display a different panel if I so wanted, but just like full VR, there'd be no tangible switch or control to access.

Essentially, the way I'm thinking about it, AR could be used the same as VR, in that you get to see a full 3D representation of the cockpit. The difference is that with AR, you can have either have gaps, areas where you can see past the AR, or else you have AR elements placed behind your actual hardware.

A perfect example would be a hardware yoke in a dash panel. With VR, you don't see your yoke at all, you'd see the digital representation of the yoke in your goggles, along with the instrumentation on the panel behind the yoke. With AR, you'd see your hardware yoke handle and shaft protruding out of a digital representation of a panel.

Augmented reality would ideally let you merge the two, digital and tangible, in ways that are really only limited by your imagination.

Powerful enough AR would ideally let you create a whole VR world (in flight sim talk, both inside and outside the VC), while letting you see and keep hardware controls such as a yoke.

Note that I'm getting far, far ahead of even the best hype of the Hololens.