I'm well aware of the fact that it is about to be 2016.
John,
I looked at HUD's 20 years ago (and had looked at
it nearly 35 years) ago and put some effort into
developing one after getting a ride in the RAAF's
F/A 18 simulator where I was VERY impressed by
the HUD and the general way MacAir (now Boeing)
did the displays on it. Extremely simple and
clean and the update rate on the digital displays was just right.
I also looked at a simple Head mounted display 20
years ago. In both cases I concluded the
advantages were too small to bother continuing development at the time.
I've seen Google glass and other head mounted
displays as well as the "HUDs" being sold as car
speedometers and I contacted a Texas outfit that
is developing an aircraft type HUD. Google glass
and similar are promising but both they and the
"HUDs" don't focus at infinity (20 to 30 feet in
the real world). If they don't focus at effective
infinity you won't see anything through them as
it is out of focus, so what's the point? You may
as well give a quick glance at a panel mounted
instrument. It is also necessary to distinguish
between the actual optical focus and the
perception focus. Eyes don't quite do what most
people think they do. As per my US Navy example.
Our B500/600/800 GCD (Glareshield Controller
Display) is an almost HUD that you can mount in
the lip of the glareshield (same display area as
a 57mm diameter instrument), owes much to the
MacAir UFC (Up Front Controller) in the F/A 18
(and saves a panel hole which can be used for
other things like a mandated transponder). It is
quite comfortable to use as your peripheral
vision helps maintain orientation while adjusting any settings in flight.
Now there is a wider issue here and that is that
all this instrumentation ISN'T there so you can
play with it while flying a glider. It is to
provide information to help you make decisions.
Your unaided senses cannot do this. The decisions
are on both very short and much longer time
periods from 1 to 2 seconds (centering thermals)
to flying at around the right speed between
thermals (10 to 15 seconds), heading in the right
direction etc. However some information isn't
amenable to sensing except by observation outside
the cockpit, such as the ways the clouds up ahead
and to either side are developing. It may help to look up OODA Loop.
Somehow the information must be displayed to the
pilot through the normal human senses. As outside
vision is so important it is a good idea to
offload some of the information processing to the
other senses. So far audio has been popular and
of course the instrument indications both visual
and audio are supplemented by the pilot's
kinesthetic sense (the seat of your pants).
With a good audio and a vario with a nice smooth
but fast response rate, the audio can bypass your
conscious thinking and you'll simply move your
hands and feet to center a thermal and stay in
the core. You certainly don't need the stupid and
dangerous displays showing rate of climb around
the circle. If you need those you simply need to
fly more. They have other problems in that
horizontal gusts can cause false readings around
the circle. The same applies to the rich colour
"eye magnet" displays with lots of clutter
forcing a pilot to do unnecessary mental
processing to extract the information he needs.
See again my comment on the F/A18. If you need
stuff displayed that you can see by looking
outside (i.e Flarm data) YOU AREN'T LOOKING AROUND OUTSIDE ENOUGH.
Having the right sensors with right human
interfaces is the name of the game, not grabbing
whatever latest technology can be stuffed into
the cockpit regardless of the type of aircraft
and its mission. Making any modern vario
compatible with a HUD or Head Mounted Display
that has a digital input is a fairly trivial exercise
The point about seeing and perceiving being
different seems to be lost on you. There is an
entire branch of psychology that deals with human
- machine interfaces (the respectable part of
psychology, not the voodoo side). Maybe you need to do some reading.
The great aviation writer Antoine de Saint
Exupery once wrote something to the effect that
"when the machine becomes perfect it becomes
unnoticeable". This should be the goal of all human - machine interfaces
Lastly saying this "Youre making a fool of
yourself. It is about to be 2016 not 1916." is
a little silly for the publisher of a dead tree
magazine. In late 2015. I think that's hilarious.
Mike
At 01:40 PM 12/14/2015, you wrote:
On 14/12/15 2:59 PM, "BORGELT_MIKE"
<<[email protected]>[email protected]>
wrote: Our reply hereunder:
Mike
Youre making a fool of yourself. It is about to be 2016 not 1916.
John
At 08:53 AM 12/14/2015, you wrote:
GLIDING INTERNATIONAL
ISSUE JANUARY 2015
You can now buy a heads-up-display for your
sailplane for as low as $259. Gliding
International challenges gilder instrument
manufacturers to make their products
compatible. This heads in the cockpit
eliminator should be compulsory for all
sailplanes writes Joseph Carr, the new writer to
join our competent team at Gliding International.
We already have a "head in the cockpit"
eliminator for gliders. It is called audio,
which in combination with attitude by looking outside, works fine.
If you aren't already looking outside you are
missing the information that will help your
cross country soaring - the clouds, the ground, other gliders, aircraft etc.
Borgelt Instruments is also working on a new
pilot interface which isn't a HUD or Head
mounted display and which will be much more unobtrusive.
I have a friend who flys the ARH Tiger
helicopter with a helmet mounted display. Great
thing for the purpose but he told me he's aware
of some US Navy research where pilots picked up
uncued targets about 88% of the time without a
HUD and 8% when looking through a HUD. Human
vision isn't so much about "seeing" as it is about "perceiving".
When I say "uncued" I mean that there isn't a
little square box in the HUD framing where to
look for the target put their by the radar and
or infrared sensors of that aircraft or others that are datalinked to it..
Mike
Borgelt Instruments - design & manufacture of
quality soaring instrumentation since 1978
www.borgeltinstruments.com
<http://www.borgeltinstruments.com/> tel: 07
4635 5784 overseas: int+61-7-4635 5784
mob: 042835 5784 : int+61-42835 5784
P O Box 4607, Toowoomba East, QLD 4350, Australia
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_______________________________________________
Aus-soaring mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.base64.com.au/listinfo/aus-soaring
Borgelt Instruments - design & manufacture of
quality soaring instrumentation since 1978
www.borgeltinstruments.com
tel: 07 4635 5784 overseas: int+61-7-4635 5784
mob: 042835 5784 : int+61-42835 5784
P O Box 4607, Toowoomba East, QLD 4350, Australia
_______________________________________________
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