A primary flight display with three-dimensional capability provides information in an intuitive format for enhanced situational awareness. The display also includes other navigational data such as airspeed, attitude, altitude, and heading. The display may also include three view slices, a pictorial autopilot status indicator, vertical and lateral deviation and deviation history, glide slope and localizer information, airport and runway information, past position history of the aircraft and other nearby aircraft. The display may depict potential threats to the aircraft such as terrain or other manmade obstacles, nearby aircraft, severe weather thus increasing situational awareness with respect thereto. In a preferred embodiment, the three dimensional tactical map is implemented as a frequency separated display.
Terrain anticollision equipment generally uses a display device showing a two-dimensional synthetic map of the terrain overflown by the aircraft and in which the relief is shown by superposed slices assigned false colors representative of the magnitude of the risk of collisions. The allocation of the false colors and/or the positions of the slices is referenced with respect to a reference display altitude related to the instantaneous altitude of the aircraft or to a short term forecast altitude for the aircraft, each of the referencings having its own advantages as a function of the situation in progress for the aircraft. Here it is proposed that the reference display altitude be made to vary, with gentle transitions, with no visible jerks on the screen, as a function of the aircraft's situation deduced from the flight parameters so as to have, at any moment for the crew, the most pertinent possible and the most useful possible map having regard to the instantaneous situation vis a vis the risks of collision.
A flight control indicator for an aircraft includes a central unit that determines a change of vertical or lateral trajectory. A display, which may present a first indicator of a next vertical change and a second indicator of a next lateral change, presents the one of the first and second indicators indicating the change of trajectory which is closest from the current position of the aircraft.
The invention relates to a method of synthesizing a cartographic image consisting of pixels and representing a terrain overflown by an aircraft, the cartographic image being computed at each pixel on the basis of several cues which include a first color altimetric cue obtained on the basis of a datum of absolute altitude or relative altitude with respect to the altitude of the aircraft, of a possible cue of presence of at least one intervisibility zone and of a possible cue of presence of a forest zone, a second shading cue representative of the relief of the terrain, and a possible third color planimetric cue, the entire set of altimetric cues constituting an altimetric image and the entire set of planimetric cues constituting a planimetric image, the method comprising at least two types of mode, on the one hand a normal mode type in which, at each pixel, the shading cue modulates the altimetric cue but not the planimetric cue and on the other hand an inverted mode type in which, at each pixel, the shading cue modulates the planimetric cue but not the altimetric cue, and the cartographic image being obtained, in a normal mode type on the basis of the modulated altimetric image and of the planimetric image, in an inverted mode type on the basis of the altimetric image and of the modulated planimetric image.
A system and method for displaying traffic targets in a conformal perspective view. The system comprises a display screen for graphical display of data, one or more sensors for obtaining traffic data regarding traffic targets, and one or more processors for receiving traffic data from the one or more sensors and providing input to the display screen. The display screen displays traffic targets as icons in a 3-dimensional graphical representation of real space. The display size of the icons is selected from a finite set of sizes which correspond to a finite set of distance ranges based on the distance to the traffic targets.
A method for displaying attitude, heading, and navigation data on a single display is described. The method comprises configuring the display with terrain data, overlaying the terrain display with a compass rose display, and superimposing an attitude direction indicator with the compass rose display, the attitude direction indicator referenced to a center of the compass rose.