2D versus 3D aviation weather visualisations

Even though aviation takes place in three spatial dimensions, pilots today still mostly acquire weather information through static 2D weather maps, just as 50 years ago. In this article, we study whether interactive 3D weather visualisations increase weather-related situation awareness (SA) of pilots compared to conventional 2D weather maps. The results of a user study with commercial pilots (n = 24) are presented, in which the influence of perspective and vertical profile on SA, usability and recall were investigated. Our findings reveal that a 2D planar map view results in the highest SA compared to 3D weather visualisations, and, contrary to pilot preferences, an additional vertical profile does not further improve SA. The addition of a vertical profile supports weather feature recall, and reduces head-down times.