Synthetic Vision: Application Areas, Rationale, Implementation, and Results

Abstract

Synthetic vision is regarded as a means to increase both safety and operational capabilities. The design of a synthetic vision system presents the designer with questions regarding which data need to be presented, how the data should be represented, and how the representation should be mapped onto the display. A prototype synthetic vision system was designed and iteratively refined. This article discusses how the results from research into spatial displays have been used to understand the design options and resulted in the choices made. Also, an overview of the flight tests, their specific goals, and the main results is presented.