The airplane system intrigued me. Most aircraft these days (save light aircraft that really only get flown in day VFR) already have a digital notion of pitch and bank, which is trivially repeated around the cockpit to the indicators and flight management system, among others. It would be simple (compared to most avionics upgrades) to add a pitch and bank port that you could plug something like that into. Two signal channels plus a few watts of 28 VDC aircraft power in some kind of standard interface.
I think wearing that would make it much easier to trust your instruments, the first and hardest challenge of instrument flying. Once disoriented, it takes an awful lot of discipline to ignore what your inner ear is telling you and steer by the needles. Even on a bright clear day with a beautiful horizon, looking to the side when you roll out of a turn a little too fast, maybe with a slight sub-1G pushover, and straight-and-level flight feels like a weird turn. At night, you end up with unfortunate accidents (like John Kennedy Jr's) that claim an awful lot of lives just because the horizon isn't visible and you don't trust the instrument that is proven to be wrong much less often than you are.
The FAA would be suspicious of such instruments, and rightfully so, but I think in time it would be an invaluable addition to a pilot's awareness. There would of course have to be a constant low-level stimulation, to make it immediately obvious that the device is powered, and an instant indication that the device is not receiving reliable information from the aircraft's attitude system (such as maybe "blinking" the pilot's wrists) as well as visible indicators on the instrument panel. With normal aviation precautions, and an injunction not to rely solely on such "newfangled contraptions", I think this would be a very valuable system. There would be less cockpit voice recordings of pilots who couldn't quite figure out why their instruments were "all screwed up."
I think wearing that would make it much easier to trust your instruments, the first and hardest challenge of instrument flying. Once disoriented, it takes an awful lot of discipline to ignore what your inner ear is telling you and steer by the needles. Even on a bright clear day with a beautiful horizon, looking to the side when you roll out of a turn a little too fast, maybe with a slight sub-1G pushover, and straight-and-level flight feels like a weird turn. At night, you end up with unfortunate accidents (like John Kennedy Jr's) that claim an awful lot of lives just because the horizon isn't visible and you don't trust the instrument that is proven to be wrong much less often than you are.
The FAA would be suspicious of such instruments, and rightfully so, but I think in time it would be an invaluable addition to a pilot's awareness. There would of course have to be a constant low-level stimulation, to make it immediately obvious that the device is powered, and an instant indication that the device is not receiving reliable information from the aircraft's attitude system (such as maybe "blinking" the pilot's wrists) as well as visible indicators on the instrument panel. With normal aviation precautions, and an injunction not to rely solely on such "newfangled contraptions", I think this would be a very valuable system. There would be less cockpit voice recordings of pilots who couldn't quite figure out why their instruments were "all screwed up."