AEA Pilot's Guide 2021-2022 - 47

systems in high-end turbine-powered aircraft panels
helped popularize this new tool as a viable addition to
the cockpit.
Progress being what it was, avionics makers large
and small moved to incorporate the tool into their
avionics systems. And the quality of SVS imagery
naturally advanced. Wire-frame images gave way to
more-conventional color-graphics renditions as moredetailed
scan data became available.
In tandem with advances in avionics' systems
graphics display capabilities, today's best SVS
systems approach motion-picture levels of realism in
their graphics renderings.
And SVS quickly spread in
availability as the systems
improved in quality and
rendering speed.
Today, numerous
options exist to retrofit SVS
technology to virtually any
cockpit, and avionics OEMs
increasingly include SVS as
a standard feature of their
integrated avionics packages
and glass-cockpit primary
flight displays.
As the electronic flight
bag began to supplant paper
in pilots' flight bags, SVS
became a feature of virtually
every EFB program flying.
But as we'll discuss, SVS,
combined vision system for the most-sophisticated
tool yet for seeing in the clag.
Between the three, literally any aircraft can gain
the benefit of improved situational awareness in most
conditions.
SVS 101
SVS defined by the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration is as follows: A synthetic vision system
is an aircraft cockpit display technology that presents
the visual environment external to the aircraft using
computer-generated imagery in a manner analogous
to how it would appear to the
pilot if forward visibility were not
restricted.
YOU CAN'T
AVOID WHAT
YOU CAN'T SEE -
AND WHAT
YOU CAN'T
SEE CAN
HURT YOU.
wonderful, flexible and portable tool though it is,
comes with limitations.
With the advent of another popular vision-option
tool - the enhanced vision system - SVS became
available in combination with this sensor-based vision
tool.
Many pilots consider the two essential to their ability
to tackle night and inclement weather conditions, given
that EVS brings its own limitations to the cockpit. And
the aviation community is already embracing a third
option for seeing under challenging conditions, an
option that blends the best of EVS and SVS with a
highly desirable vision-based tool: the head-up display,
or HUD.
The result, the latest in vision-aiding systems: the
- 47 -
As described above, synthetic
vision systems tap data by
satellite scans that captured
details of the terrain, buildings,
obstacles, the winding paths
of roads and rivers, coastlines
- even runways and taxiways
at airports. Therein lies the
strengths and weaknesses of
SVS. The images pilots see
when using SVS exist only in the
data of the software making up
SVS.
SVS' only connection to
sensors exists in the reality
that a satellite sensor is able to
" see " the planet below and the
programmers make that data able to play, or run, on a
computer with graphics capabilities.
SVS depends on GPS information - location,
speed, altitude, vertical speed and flight vector
- to tap into its database to pull up the virtual
representation of the outside world that the pilot would
see. Using information from navigation databases,
SVS creates a picture of the flight environment and
overlays that picture with aircraft instrumentation and
weather information to create a single image that
contains all of the information necessary for safe flight
operations.
This means that if something wasn't there to be
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