Pilots strategically compensate for display enlargements in surveillance and flight control tasks

Experiments were conducted to assess the impact of display size on flight control, airspace surveillance, and goal-directed target search.

Research of 3-D displays has shown that display scale compression influences the perception of flight path deviation, though less is known about the causes that drive this effect. In addition, research on attention-based tasks has shown that information displaced to significant eccentricities can amplify effort, but it is unclear whether the effect generates a performance difference in complex displays.

In Experiment 1, 16 pilots completed a low-fidelity flight control task under single- and dual-axis control. In Experiment 2, the control task from Experiment 1 was scaled up to a more realistic flight environment, and pilots performed hazard surveillance and target search tasks.

For flight control, pilots exhibited less path error and greater stick activity with a large display, which was attributed both to greater enhanced resolution and to the fact that larger depictions of error lead to greater urgency in correcting deviations. Size did not affect hazard surveillance or search, as pilots were adaptive in altering scanning patterns in response to the enlargement of the displays.

Although pilots were adaptive to display changes in search and surveillance, display size reduction diminished estimates of flight path deviation and control performance because of lowered resolution and control urgency.

Care should be taken when manipulating display size, as size reduction can diminish control performance.