“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”
Thrashing around looking for the ‘like’ button. Chris From: Mike Borgelt Sent: Monday, December 14, 2015 4:32 PM To: Discussion of issues relating to Soaring in Australia. Subject: Re: [Aus-soaring] JANUARY ISSUE - GLIDING INTERNATIONAL 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" <wlmailhtml:[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 _______________________________________________ Aus-soaring mailing list wlmailhtml:[email protected] http://lists.base64.com.au/listinfo/aus-soaring _______________________________________________ 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 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Aus-soaring mailing list [email protected] http://lists.base64.com.au/listinfo/aus-soaring
_______________________________________________ Aus-soaring mailing list [email protected] http://lists.base64.com.au/listinfo/aus-soaring
