Perception aspects on perspective aircraft displays
This report presents two experiments in the area of perspective aircraft displays. The research focus was to explore the possibilities to understand symbolic and symbol relations in the 3D environment. In the first experiment the subjects' ability to distinguish between five different aircraft symbol shapes were investigated together with the perception of their heading in the 3D space. The perspective used in this experiment was egocentric. In the second experiment the judgment of the spatial relation between an own-ship symbol and a target symbol was investigated. Thus, in this case, the perspective was exocentric and two aspect angles were used for the camera position. Both experiments were carried out in non-dynamic scenarios. The display character was topographic with a superposed grid at the ground surface. The overall conclusion from the experiments is that judgment of direction in 3D presentations is very difficult in these static scenarios. Symbol recognition of 3D pictorial symbols is problematic for complicated symbol shapes as well, depending on different appearances for various symbol headings in the 3D space.
spatial relations 3d displays symbol identification