Exploration of three-dimensional computer graphics in cockpit avionics

There has been a trend during the 1980s in commercial airliner cockpits of replacing many of the round-faced, analog instruments with CRT displays. However, the computer graphics technology that is utilized in these CRT displays is more than ten years old and frequently simply mimics the appearance of the older, analog displays. We will explore some of the possible uses of state of the art, three dimensional computer graphics as an integrator and as a visualizer of flight information. Using computer models of primary navigational features and the ray-tracing rendering technique, three-dimensional, symbolic representations of flight information are explored. Flight tasks investigated include enroute navigation, collision avoidance, weather, and the instrument approach.