VRnam is a Virtual Reality concept bringing cost-effective, world-class flight training products to the global market.
The Team
Captain Shane William Carroll – Founder
Microsoft Flight Simulator 3.0 (released mid-1988) is to blame for Shane getting into the Airline industry. Shane applied to Aer Lingus eleven years later, at 18 years of age, and attended Dublin City University for exactly 3 days before being accepted as a fully sponsored cadet in 1999, graduating a short time later from the CAE Oxford Aviation Academy. He has flown Airbus A320/1 aircraft throughout Europe and Asia since.
Most recently based in Ho Chi Minh City working for Vietnam Airlines as a Captain and Type Rating Instructor on the Airbus A320/1 fleet.
Also employed as a contract Synthetic Flight Instructor for CAE Hong Kong.
Has over 10,000 hours flying the Airbus A320/1.
-EASA TRI (Type Rating Instructor) A320/1
-CAAV TRI (Type Rating Instructor) A320/1
-HK CAD SFI (Synthetic Flight Instructor) A320/1
Shane is now situated in Toulouse working full time with Airbus BizLabs and the VRnam Team.
Xabier Sevillano – Lead 3D Artist
Fascinated with 3D since he saw Toy Story at 5 years of age.
Tech geek, at the age of 9 his testing career began, disassembling and taking apart phones, cameras, toys, and everything that came to his hand. Later this passion for seeing how everything works continued with computers.
Former programmer that dropped coding for moving vertices and polygons when he saw ZBrush for the first time.
Graduated with a Bachelor in Fine Arts and Animation at Digipen Institute of Technology, Europe.
Worked at Davalor Salud making games in VR.
Actually making sure everything looks awesome at VRnam.
Sergio Vicente – Gameplay and Systems Programmer
Passionate about videogames and new technologies.
His firsts memories of videogames were playing (and being beaten at) “Boxing” on an Atari 2600. At the age of 6, that console broke and had to be replaced with a personal computer. From that point onwards, his enthusiasm for technology only grew.
Graduated with a Bachelor in Computer Science in Real Time Interactive Simulation at Digipen Institute of Technology, Europe.
Worked at Davalor Salud making games in VR.
Now taking care of the interaction and responsiveness of all elements in the cockpit.
Ander Alzola – UI and LMS Programmer(s)
Marvelled by movie magic and video games at an early age, Ander Alzola decided to pursue a career in the digital entertainment industry.
After graduating in Real-Time Interactive Simulation from DigiPen Europe-Bilbao, he participated in engineering the critically acclaimed Nintendo 3DS game, Metroid: Samus Returns (2017).
Yet, eager to follow new strands, he has recently engaged in Virtual Reality flight training where he is looking forward to researching and putting new concepts to the test.
The Project
VRnam is a real-time VR application in which trainees can learn/drill flows and procedures until perfection in an immersive 3D cockpit.
The VRnam Project was accepted into the Airbus BizLabs hybrid accelerator beginning October 2017. We are currently developing our project with the support of Airbus. We are busy tackling the challenges of both business and software development in parallel. Within the BizLabs campus Airbus internal teams and external startup companies are brought under one roof to work towards their respective goals with the aid of experienced coaches and advisers.
See: The VRnam Project Tech Demo on YouTube
UPDATED VIDEO FEB 2018
About
Founded originally in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; VRnam is a privately funded technology project set up primarily to enable the use of the newest training methods in flight training. With professional grade flight simulators costing between €10 to €20 million, being in near-24hr use year-around and very much expensive to house, man, operate and utilize; VRnam’s aim is to create a training environment that can be operated in a normal office or home with minimal instruction and oversight for many hours at very minimal cost.
Our Project will have two major stages:
The first will be the release of a non-flying, procedural, training environment. It will explain, guide and drill procedures together with trainee professional pilots step by step inside a full fidelity cockpit.
The second will aim to integrate OEM simulation grade data for use as an ICAO-certified simulation device replacement.
We will also integrate a number of key features including remote multi-user support, customised SOP’s, instructor matchmaking, etc.
This technology will firstly be exploited on the Airbus A320 airliner family and then rolled out on further aircraft types in future. We are now in mid-production for the Airbus A320 segment of our project and will have more to show in the coming months.
Now incorporated in The Republic of Ireland.
We are under acceleration with Airbus BizLab in Toulouse.
