Enhancing parachute training with ParaSim: Weapon of the Week

You know, for most jobs in the military, learning starts in the classroom

Eventually, though, things switch to a more hands-on approach. The theoretical gives way to the practical

But what if those practical lessons require jumping out of an airplane

We've got an answer for that in our Weapon of the Week. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, go, go, go

On the big screen, skydiving can look almost effortless. But that's the movies

In real life, it takes hours of instruction and practice to become proficient

Fortunately for America's special operations troops, there's a way to build that proficiency without ever getting more than a few feet off the ground

This is the Parasim. And for more than three decades, it's helped men and women in uniform

go from the basics of parachuting to ironing out the wrinkles of in-depth mission planning

We been around 35 years now started in 1990 and trees were triangles and you had to steer and avoid obstacles and it was just basically there was a lot of injuries and we were just trying to keep people safe And it now developed with the technology to become more of a mission planner emergency trainer

and understanding the canopy before you got to do it in real life. Russ Lesink is Parasim's VP of Sales and Military Training

He tells us their setup allows for hands-on training in a safe environment for a fraction of the cost of an actual jump

We're using virtual reality, and the biggest component is the instructor. And it's taking that knowledge from the instructor to a new person or experienced person

and putting them in a challenging situation to test their skills and make sure that they're doing the proper procedures in order that they need to be done in

Naturally, I had to try it for myself. All right, you ready? Yep

It's uncomfortable. Is it all right? No, it's good. Yeah. Okay. We're going to free fall all the way down to 4,000

Pull your head back. Why don't you try one of those turns when you get a chance

Look at that. That's great. And when you're ready, go ahead and pull that handle

Nice throw. Excellent. Nice You doing it Still left 90 and head down the bridge there or whatever the road is there Let it fly baby Look at you coming in on the target I going to have you pull both toggles now Hold them down Hold them down

That was good, man. How do you do that? Years of Call of Duty

Another reason why the military leaned on the Southern California-based company for more than three decades

is its willingness to collaborate, to make sure students are getting the kind of training they'll need

once they step out of an actual airplane. The soft community really brought us along

because they're the subject matter experts. And they told us they wanted 25 different scenarios

correctable, non-correctable. They gave us YouTube videos and snapshots, and we were able to physically model that in the sim

So that way they could practice it. And after you try twice to fix something, then you know you've got to cut away and pull your next reserve

or the landing site picture of a landing. Understanding the downwind-based vinyl pattern

and what that site picture looks like at all times of the day is super important

According to LeSync Parasim uses special head tracking technology with independent trackers instead of the built ones found in gaming goggles That because they want to minimize latency in the simulator with the team focusing on making sure the motion feels accurate

So, when a user moves their head or body, it syncs perfectly with the simulation

People feel more confident in the success rate at Yuma Freefall School has been higher

because they've been able to experience that parachute before doing it live the first time

Also, people are more confident for their jumps when they're doing high wind scenarios

where they actually have to fly backwards with an MC6 parachute and understand that that's a reality

You're going to have to land going backwards and face into the wind. Or being able to understand, hey, it's night, I can barely see my canopy

and I need to look at certain areas to make sure I have a good canopy. And I'm not just going to write in a bad one because I don't I'm not confident in my procedures

LeSink says over the years, nearly 400 parasim setups were installed not only for American troops around the world, but for NATO and Allied airborne units as well