The primary flight display (PFD) is an important component of the synthetic vision systems (SVS) being developed for aircraft navigation. This paper reports on two experiments to examine the effects of guidance symbology, display size, and geometric field of view (GFOV) within the PFD of a SVS. The experiments were conducted in a high-fidelity flight simulator. In the first experiment, 18 pilots flew highlighted and lowlighted tunnel-in-the-sky displays, as well as a less cluttered follow-me aircraft (FMA), through a series of curved approaches over rugged terrain. The results revealed that both tunnels supported better flight path tracking and lower workload levels than did the FMA because of the availability of more preview information. Increasing tunnel intensity had no benefit on tracking and, in fact, degraded traffic awareness because of clutter and attentional tunneling. In the second experiment, 24 pilots flew a lowlighted tunnel configured according to different display sizes (small or large) and GFOVs (30A. or 60A.). Measures of flight path tracking and terrain awareness generally favored the 60A. GFOV; however, there were no clear effects of display size. Limitations of this study are discussed.
Samenvatting