An assessment of a proposed method for adjusting and focusing ANVIS night vision goggles

Night vision goggles are becoming an increasingly important tool in military aviation. They provide superior visual capability over unaided night vision, but any reduction in goggle performance can have a serious effect on flight safety and operational effectiveness. This study shows that the use of a standard adjustment procedure in a night vision goggle (NVG) test lane, with a resolution chart, provides an effective method for aircrew to obtain better visual capability than is currently obtained by focusing on distant features of the landscape. Visual acuity (VA) was measured for 20 aircrew representing all crew positions, after using both the current adjustment method and the proposed method for adjusting ANVIS NVGs. The average visual acuity showed an improvement from 6/19 (s.d. = 3.9) with the current method to 6/13 (s.d. = 2.8) with the proposed method. However, NVG test lanes cannot be used with goggles which have fixed infinity objective lenses eg Nite.