Pilot report / Mixed reality
Touch the cockpit.
See the mission.
Joe Vidal’s DCS flight deck demonstrates the promise of mixed reality: a real, tactile F/A-18C cockpit remains visible and usable while the virtual world continues beyond the canopy.
Watch / 17:30
A complete mixed-reality flight.
Hosted by Joe Vidal from the VidCom-AI Flight Sim Studio in Atlanta, the demonstration shows PassThroughForge bringing a physical Dogfight Dynamics cockpit into the DCS World environment.
Why mixed reality matters
The best of both worlds belongs in one cockpit.
Traditional VR creates an extraordinary outside world, but it can hide the physical switches, controls, and panels the pilot needs to operate. Mixed reality changes that relationship by selectively revealing the real cockpit inside the headset.
The result is a flight deck where hands meet real controls, muscle memory remains useful, and the virtual environment can begin exactly where the physical structure ends.
Physical controls stay physical.
Real switches, panels, HOTAS hardware, and cockpit geometry remain available by sight and by feel.
The virtual world owns the canopy.
DCS provides the aircraft, weather, carrier deck, terrain, threats, and mission beyond the flight deck.
The boundary becomes the experience.
Passthrough alignment connects the physical cockpit to the rendered aircraft instead of forcing the pilot to choose between them.
System briefing
Built around a real flight deck.
This demonstration is a customer installation. Exact controls, computing hardware, headset, tracking, and software configuration can vary from one build to another.
- Physical platform
- Dogfight Dynamics F/A-18C cockpit system
- Simulation
- Digital Combat Simulator (DCS World)
- Mixed reality
- PassThroughForge passthrough workflow
- Location
- VidCom-AI Flight Sim Studio / Atlanta
- Pilot & host
- Joe Vidal / RadioJoeV WBD-Horns
Build path
Start with the cockpit you can touch.
Build modularly around the hardware you already own, or commission a complete turn-key system configured around your space and mission profile.