Effect of head-up display dynamics on fighter flying qualities

A flight-test program was conducted investigating the effect of head-up display dynamic response characteristics on fighter aircraft flying qualities. The influences of computational time delay in the display system were addressed primarily. The aircraft motion response to cockpit control inputs remained satisfactory without improvement during the parametric display system delay variation. Three pilots were evaluation subjects performing up-and-away fighter maneuvering and power approach tasks. The data suggest that up to 250 ms of total display time delay can be tolerated before a significant degradation in flying qualities occurs for up-and-away flight tasks. For the power approach task, up to 300 iris could be tolerated before a degradation began. The importance of the motion and visual cues is stressed in highlighting the significance of display system time delay effects.