You can buy a radio controlled aircraft with an onboard camera for a few hundred dollars (they seem to be exclusively used for inspecting the ground, rather than looking where the plane is going). You can get hold of very credible flight simulator program for next to nothing.
Today’s invention combines these two elements to create a laptop based, radio-control interface. As you watch the real cockpit view from the aircraft, displayed on the screen, standard flight sim controls, superimposed on the image, allow you to alter course and see the view change, almost in real-time.
These days, when one fighter jet can control a small fleet of pilotless planes in parallel, the proposed system might have all sorts of military applications.
It now seems that someone has made a credible attempt at implementing the guts of this idea.
