Display of Aircraft State Information for Ambient Vision Processing Using Helmet Mounted Displays

The distinction between the ambient and focal modes of processing visual information has be essentially unknown to most designers. Inadvertently, but consequently, all HUD and HMD symbology has be designed exclusively for focal processing. With awareness of the difference in these modes of processing comes the opportunity to present flight information for ambient processing that can be assimilated concurrently with focal-processed information. A literature review will be performed. HMD information presentations for the ambient mode of processing will be designed with parametric variants. They will be implemented, demonstrated and evaluated both on a workstation display and in an existing rudimentary helicopter simulator within HMD. Success of the Phase I work can literally be the first step in a revolution in the way synthetic, symbolic information is presented to pilots. Improved flight performance and safety for civilian helicopter operations such as law enforcement, medivac, offshore oil platform ferrying and search and rescue.