What are the aviation technologies of the future? How can climate-neutral flying be achieved? The German Aerospace Center is working on precisely these questions. And it presents the latest research findings in the augmented reality app “eFlight”. This was presented at the ILA – Europe’s largest aerospace exhibition – in front of leading politicians such as Franziska Giffey and Robert Habeck.

DLR has built a show-worthy aircraft exhibit that showcases a wide variety of research areas. As one of Germany’s leading research institutions, DLR is now going one step further and wants to use an AR application to immerse users even deeper into the world of tomorrow’s flying. The result is an augmented reality app with two user scenarios that bring a total of 17 research areas to life by means of elaborate renderings and animations.

1. Projection onto the trade show exhibit
Using marker-based tracking, the app projects what is happening inside the research aircraft onto the 3-meter tall aircraft exhibit. Thanks to location detection, the user is played different content that he can activate and discover with a click.


2. Projection into space
But the AR experience should also be accessible to interested parties who have no contact with the exhibit. The app projects a virtual version of eFlight into the room. With their mobile device, users can interactively explore the aircraft and all of its research topics.