The peripheral visual cue assessment facility at Ames Research Center

Introduction: A great deal of time and effort have been expended over the years to gain a better understanding of what extra-cockpit visual information pilots use to initiate manual control inputs. This effort has been expended in flight simulators as well as in flight and has provided some valuable insights into various subject areas discussed in detail elsewhere (AGARD, 1981). In both simulators outfitted with advanced, computer -generated scenes and actual aircraft there is usually a rich array of constantly moving optical information from which the observer must extract relevant information in order to carry out his various tasks. Because of the amount and complexity of this array of information it is extremely difficult to know precisely which cue or set of cues led to which response. Similarly, because flight vectors may be considered in terms of their various linear, orthogonal components le. g. , glide slope is a resultant of forward velocity and descent