Traffic and Flight Guidance Depiction on a Synthetic Vision System Display: The Effects of Clutter on Performance and Visual Attention Allocation

Fourteen pilots flew a synthetic vision system (SVS) display, through a terrain and traffic-rich environment in a high fidelity flight simulator. Traffic information was hosted on the SVS display. In a 2times2 factorial design, the SVS display hosted a highway-in-the-sky in half the conditions, and hosted an instrument panel overlay in the other half. We examined the effects of the resulting clutter from overlay (but reduced scanning) on routine flight performance, SVS traffic detection, and response to off-normal events, as these were mediated by visual scanning measures of attention allocation. The tunnel greatly improved flight path tracking and traffic detection, but slightly disrupted the detection of unexpected outside world traffic. The instrument panel overlay provided no benefits to tracking and a clutter-related time cost to SVS traffic detection. Visual attention was focused on the SVS display over half the time, and rarely on the outside world, even in visual meteorological conditions (VMC), a source of possible cognitive tunneling.