Synthetic Vision Displays for Instrument Landings and Traffic Awareness – Development and Flight Testing

Over the past five years the GPS Laboratory at Stanford University has developed a 3-D “Out the Window” Tunnel-in-the-Sky Display. This display intuitively and accurately renders the attitude and location of the aircraft relative to the local terrain. This paper summarizes the design, development, and implementation of the Stanford Tunnel-in-the-Sky Display from 1995 through Spring 2000. In particular, details of the display content and system hardware for each stage of development throughout the last five years will be discussed. Extensive flight-testing, culminating in 41 hours of Tunnel-in-the-Sky flight and 180 approaches, have proved invaluable in this research in that it led to solutions that did not appear in laboratory simulations. The research has shown that functional Tunnel-in-the-Sky Displays can be inexpensive, easy to fly, and provide exceptional guidance, terrain and traffic awareness.