Improved flight technical performance in flight decks equipped with synthetic vision information system displays

Synthetic vision information systems (SVIS) are the next generation of cockpit display systems that will become an integral part of the commercial flight deck in the future. The goal of this study was to evaluate SVIS against conventional glass cockpit displays to assess whether or not SVIS can improve pilot performance, situation awareness (SA), and workload. The evaluation was conducted in a fixed-base laboratory flight simulator located in the Operator Performance Laboratory at the University of Iowa. A total of 12 pilot evaluators hand-flew fairly difficult approaches into the Eagle County, Colorado, airport. Specialty designed questionnaires were used in various phases of the flights to estimate workload, SA, and user preference. Information relating to SA was collected using the Situation Awareness Global Assessment Technique and workload estimates were obtained using the NASA Task Loading Index technique. Eye movement data were collected using a modified IScan ETL 500 system, and analyzed to find a link analysis (an analysis of eye movement transitions between areas of interest on the displays), scan length, fixation frequencies, location of fixations, and duration of fixations. Flight technical error performance was derived. Analysis results indicate that the SVIS is superior to the conventional displays for the majority of the measures that were obtained in the experiments.