When current domestic Active Matrix Liquid Crystal Display (AMLCD) sources became unavailable, prime contractors for military aircraft faced a severe problem with the sudden obsolescence of these assemblies. AMLCDs had become central to crew station design, but the only qualified North American source had failed. The problem was further complicated as several programs were beginning production, and supplies of existing, useable AMLCDs were rapidly being depleted. Solutions to the availability of AMLCDs had to be found quickly. The F/A - 18E/F program faced a unique situation in that three different displays, manufactured by two different suppliers, were affected by the loss of the AMLCD source. Both of the suppliers, for various technical and programmatic reasons, chose different approaches to the crisis. The advantages and disadvantages of each approach are examined in this paper. In addition, Boeing has formed a Displays Process Action Team (DPAT) to examine whether or not it is possible to use common displays across the Company's diverse product lines.

This paper shall attempt to detail the processes used in trying to select a COTS-based general-purpose high-powered graphics engine for cockpit displays. The computer industry has shown tremendous growth in the use of high-powered graphics for games and visualization software. This growth has brought with it workstation graphics power to be the PC desktop. Trying to harness this power for a cockpit display graphics engine has many problems that need to be overcome by the avionics supplier. This paper intends to show the processes used in the development of our latest graphics display engine. The emphasis of the paper is the process used in determining the graphics and host processor for the engine. This paper includes the summaries of the trade and requirement studies used to select the host processor and the graphics accelerator. Also discussed are the difficulties that arose in trying to deal with graphic accelerator COTS manufacturers and what was done to overcome them.

Military displays are being studied to determine opportunities for technology insertion and cross-platform commonality. Principal displays, those without which the platform could not carry out its intended mission, are covered. Defense office applications are excluded. The military market is specified herein by such parameters as active display area size and packaged physical footprint dimensions. Other characteristics such as luminance, contrast, gray scale, resolution, angle, color, video capability, and night vision imaging system compatibility are noted. The perspective of this study is cross-cutting defense-wide: all current, programmed, and planned displays are taken into account.

This paper describes a Decision Support System for military display acquisition being developed under U.S. Display Consortium (USDC) sponsorship. The core of the system is a standard Life-Cycle Cost model. The system will use World Wide Web technology to make it widely accessible to Industry and Government Program Offices for use in the Display Acquisition Decision Process. Web-LCCA (Life-Cycle Cost Analyzer), a derivative of TASC's LCCA^TM, has been designed to aid in the evaluation of different Display System acquisition options. The target users of Web-LCCA are display vendors (Industry) and buyers (Government Program Offices). Web-LCCA will be USDC's standard tool for supporting cost tradeoffs and acquisition decisions among current operational displays and new flat panel display products.

The F-22 'Raptor' is being developed and manufactured as multi-role fighter aircraft for the 'air dominance' mission. The F-22 team is led by Lockheed Martin, with Boeing and Pratt & Whitney as partners. The F-22 weapons system combines supersonic cruise, maneuverability, stealth, and an extensive suite of tightly integrated sensors to achieve a high level of lethality and invulnerability against current and projected threat systems such as fighter aircraft and surface to air missiles. Despite high automation of the complex systems installed in the F-22, the pilot is heavily tasked for air battle management. Response timelines are compressed due to supersonic cruise velocities. These factors challenge the Pilot Vehicle Interface (PVI) design. This paper discusses the team's response to these challenges, describing the physical cockpit layout, its controls and displays, and the hardware architecture, software tools, and development process used to mature the F-22 'Raptor' weapons system, including a review of Human Factors design considerations for F-22 displays.

The ground combat vehicle crew of tomorrow must be able to perform their mission more effectively and efficiently if they are to maintain dominance over ever more lethal enemy forces. Increasing performance, however, becomes even more challenging when the soldier is subject to reduced crew sizes, a never- ending requirement to adapt to ever-evolving technologies and the demand to assimilate an overwhelming array of battlefield data. This, combined with the requirement to fight with equal effectiveness at any time of the day or night in all types of weather conditions, makes it clear that this crew of tomorrow will need timely, innovative solutions to overcome this multitude of barriers if they are to achieve their objectives. To this end, the U.S. Army is pursuing advanced crew stations with human-computer interfaces that will allow the soldier to take full advantage of emerging technologies and make efficient use of the battlefield information available to him in a program entitled 'Vetronics Technology Testbed.' Two critical components of the testbed are a compliment of panoramic indirect vision displays to permit drive-by-wire and multi-function displays for managing lethality, mobility, survivability, situational awareness and command and control of the vehicle. These displays are being developed and built by Computing Devices Canada, Ltd. This paper addresses the objectives of the testbed program and the technical requirements and design of the displays.

The Saab-BAe multi-role fighter aircraft Gripen has a continuous development program to incorporate new technology. Current important cockpit changes are the replacement of the three 5' X 6' monochrome CRT displays by three 6' X 8' Color Multi-Function Displays (CMFD), and the removal of the traditional and dedicated standby flight instruments. The CMFDs are equipped with built-in graphics generators. The display surfaces are supplied with flight data from two parallel and independent flight data systems, one primary (normal) and one secondary (back-up). All CMFDs have the ability to be switched over to display of back-up flight data. The importance of flight data calls for careful design of functional monitoring. The removal of the old standby instruments and the introduction of the new integrated back-up system also raises a need to define new principles for pilot monitoring of flight data. This is being dealt with in two ways. First, a special display mode is created to make it possible for the pilot to visually perform traditional cross monitoring between independent sources. Second, in order to make maximal tactical use of the CMFDs' surfaces, automated (hidden) integrity cross monitoring is being developed. Flight safety is achieved by designing a system where (a) the primary and the secondary system are totally independent except for the display surfaces which however are triple redundant; (b) the monitoring functionality is distributed both locally and centrally to ensure that no misleading flight data is displayed to the pilot.

This paper will cover some of the same ground that was presented in a paper by Peterson. It discussed transmitting video information over a digital video interface to support a number of displays which included a 1024 X 768 pixel display updated at 60 Hz. The paper indicated that a minimum bit rate of 1.465E+09 bits/sec was required to meet 8 bit gray shade performance and a number of other design constraints. What will be different in this paper is how some existing digital video standards can be hardened for use in an avionics application (imaging sensors and display interfaces) and how this interface can be converted back into the commercial standard. Converting into a commercial standard is a significant requirement for lab testing and instrumentation such as recording. One specific example is the use of SMPTE 292M as the basis for a sensor video interface. This commercial standard supports high definition TV (HDTV) formats. This includes resolutions ranging from a 1920 X 1080 format interlaced into 30 Hz frames to a 1280 X 720 non-interlaced format with 60 Hz frames. Based upon the Boeing Company's experience with signals similar to SMPTE 292M (e.g. Fiber Channel), hardening (without modifications) to meet the avionics environment would be difficult if not impractical. The compatibility needs to address both emissions so video signals do not interfere with sensitive radio receivers and susceptibility so as emitters do not interfere with piloting and targeting display information on the aircraft. The SMPTE 292M interface can share a bit rate that is similar to the previously mentioned bit. The data format will differ between the sensor and display. Boeing plans to implement both the display and the sensor interface, and will define these as interface standards.

We describe new systems for improved integrated multimodal human-computer interaction and augmented reality for a diverse array of applications, including future advanced cockpits, tactical operations centers, and others. We have developed an integrated display system featuring: speech recognition of multiple concurrent users equipped with both standard air- coupled microphones and novel throat-coupled sensors (developed at Army Research Labs for increased noise immunity); lip reading for improving speech recognition accuracy in noisy environments, three-dimensional spatialized audio for improved display of warnings, alerts, and other information; wireless, coordinated handheld-PC control of a large display; real-time display of data and inferences from wireless integrated networked sensors with on-board signal processing and discrimination; gesture control with disambiguated point-and-speak capability; head- and eye- tracking coupled with speech recognition for 'look-and-speak' interaction; and integrated tetherless augmented reality on a wearable computer. The various interaction modalities (speech recognition, 3D audio, eyetracking, etc.) are implemented a 'modality servers' in an Internet-based client-server architecture. Each modality server encapsulates and exposes commercial and research software packages, presenting a socket network interface that is abstracted to a high-level interface, minimizing both vendor dependencies and required changes on the client side as the server's technology improves.

This paper reports on the experiments undertaken by BAE SYSTEMS to determine the 'just acceptable' and 'desirable' luminance levels for graphical displays utilized in fast jet cockpits. The assessments of the displays were performed by BAE SYSTEMS test pilots. The results of the experiments are only fully applicable to displays which have the same reflectivity and black contrast as that of the display used during the assessment. The PJND (Perceived Must Noticeable) method was utilized to extend the results of the experiments to apply to displays with any combination of reflectivity and black contrast. The experiment involved both computer generated imagery and sensor imagery; as would be expected the luminance requirements for sensor imagery is far higher than it is for non-sensor imagery.

A difficult part of creating a full multifunction display (MFD) system is mapping the MFD information to the physical hardware. An important aspect of this design process involves associating screen labels with user initiated commands (e.g., button presses). A software tool, MFDTool, that applies an optimization algorithm to designer-specified constraints, thereby creating the optimum layout of MFD information for MFD hardware, has been developed. MFDTool converts the constraints into mathematical cost functions and utilizes a standard optimization algorithm to determine the MFD label assignment design that maximally satisfies the constraints. A sample MFD design problem is demonstrated.

Computer-based display designers have more sensory modes and more dimensions within sensory modality with which to encode information in a user interface than ever before. This elaboration of information presentation has made measurement of display/format effectiveness and predicting display/format performance extremely difficult. A multivariate method has been devised which isolates critical information, physically measures its signal strength, and compares it with other elements of the display, which act like background noise. This common Metric relates signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) within each stimulus dimension, then combines SNRs among display modes, dimensions and cognitive factors can predict display format effectiveness. Examples with their Common Metric assessment and validation in performance will be presented along with the derivation of the metric. Implications of the Common Metric in display design and evaluation will be discussed.

This paper reviews the current production approach and status at Planar and dpiX utilizing a common design architecture within a family of cockpit AMLCD displays. The present status of low volume production requirements to support military applications, as well as the unique display formats and performance requirements dictated by the specific cockpit applications has resulted in a manufacturing approach requiring common TFT substrate design flexibility and the use of a common foundation for the assembly of AMLCD displays suitable for a variety of high performance military cockpits.

The charter of the Joint Cockpit Office (JCO) is to plan, coordinate and accelerate the transition of advanced development cockpit/crew station technologies critical to crew effectiveness in current and future air vehicles. The JCO helps assure a single, coordinated, and highly integrated cockpit/crew station Science and Technology (S&T) program within and between the Air Force, the Army, and the Navy. It serves as the primary interface and focal point for issues involving these technologies for organizations within and external to the Services. The Services are at the advent of fielding new technologies such as helmet-mounted displays as a primary flight reference. They will most certainly evaluate the use of windowless cockpits to counter the laser threat and allow for less constraining aerodynamic conditions in future vehicle design. The transition to multi-spectral displays in future military and commercial aircraft is imminent. The JCO is well positioned to assess and focus the research needed to safely exploit these new technologies and meet customer requirements. Presently, the JCO is undertaking three initiatives: creation of a joint-service, Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRDA) with Lockheed Martin to study the thresholds of virtual helmet-mounted display attributes and effects on pilot performance; management of the Spatial Disorientation Countermeasures program, and facilitation of the actions determined by the DoD Executive Agent for Flat Panel Displays.

Affordability is the objective of acquisition reform. The institution of 'performance' specifications in lieu of 'design' specifications is a key strategy. Design of a cockpit display, for example, is left to the prime contractor based on a performance requirement stated by the government. The prime delegates to the integrator. The integrator develops the display and bill of materials provided by vendors. There is no feedback loop from the vendors to the ultimate customer, the government. As a result of this situation a communication gap exists: the government, primes, and integrators have concluded that they should pay commodity prices for custom displays. One step in the closing of this gap is the establishment of cross- cutting common reference performance specifications for aerospace and defense displays. The performance specification for cockpit displays is nearly impossible to achieve -- the last ounce of technology and more is required. Commodity markets, such as consumer notebook computers, are based on but a fraction of currently available technology -- companies 'bank' technology and roll it out across several 18-month product generations. Ruggedized consumer displays can be used in aerospace and defense applications other than the cockpit, such as mission crew stations. The performance specification for non-cockpit aerospace and defense applications is merely difficult. Acquisition reform has been defined by the Secretary of Defense to mean DoD should leverage the commercial market to the maximal extent possible. For the achievement of this end, an entirely different approach is wanted for cockpit displays versus large platform mission displays. That is, the nearly impossible requires a different design and business approach from the merely difficult.

The advantages and disadvantages of using virtual 3-D audio in mission-critical, multimedia display interfaces were evaluated. The 3D audio platform seems to be an especially promising candidate for aircraft cockpits, flight control rooms, and other command and control environments in which operators must make mission-critical decisions while handling demanding and routine tasks. Virtual audio signal processing creates the illusion for a listener wearing conventional earphones that each of a multiplicity of simultaneous speech or audio channels is originating from a different, program- specified location in virtual space. To explore the possible uses of this new, readily available technology, a test bed simulating some of the conditions experienced by the chief flight test coordinator at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center was designed and implemented. Thirty test subjects simultaneously performed routine tasks requiring constant hand-eye coordination, while monitoring four speech channels, each generating continuous speech signals, for the occurrence of pre-specified keywords. Performance measures included accuracy in identifying the keywords, accuracy in identifying the speaker of the keyword, and response time. We found substantial improvements on all of these measures when comparing virtual audio with conventional, monaural transmissions. We also explored the effect on operator performance of different spatial configurations of the audio sources in 3-D space, simulated movement (dither) in the source locations, and of providing graphical redundancy. Some of these manipulations were less effective and may even decrease performance efficiency, even though they improve some aspects of the virtual space simulation.

The Virtual Table presents stereoscopic graphics to a user in a workbench-like setting. This device shares with other large- screen display technologies (such as data walls and surround- screen projection systems) the lack of human-centered unencumbered user interfaces and 3D interaction technologies. Such shortcomings present severe limitations to the application of virtual reality (VR) technology to time- critical applications as well as employment scenarios that involve heterogeneous groups of end-users without high levels of computer familiarity and expertise. Traditionally such employment scenarios are common in planning-related application areas such as mission rehearsal and command and control. For these applications, a high grade of flexibility with respect to the system requirements (display and I/O devices) as well as to the ability to seamlessly and intuitively switch between different interaction modalities and interaction are sought. Conventional VR techniques may be insufficient to meet this challenge. This paper presents novel approaches for human-centered interfaces to Virtual Environments focusing on the Virtual Table visual input device. It introduces new paradigms for 3D interaction in virtual environments (VE) for a variety of application areas based on pen-and-clipboard, mirror-in-hand, and magic-lens metaphors, and introduces new concepts for combining VR and augmented reality (AR) techniques. It finally describes approaches toward hybrid and distributed multi-user interaction environments and concludes by hypothesizing on possible use cases for defense applications.

Various 3-D display technologies have been proposed for future cockpit displays, all with limitations. This paper describes a 3-D display technology based on a unique multiplexed holographic projection screen developed at Physical Optics Corporation. Making use of multiplexed holographic projection of multiperspective images, this display allows 360 degree look-around viewing of volume-like 3-D images by many viewers without any eyewear. By means of a high-resolution, high-speed 2-D light modulator such as an LCD or Digital Micromirror Device, the display can produce real-time full-color, high resolution 3-D images.

Volumetric 3-D displays proposed and demonstrated in the past have been low in resolution and refresh rate, but not in cost. This paper describes the development of an electro-optic multiplanar volumetric 3-D display (without moving parts) based on unique liquid crystal (LC) switchable light diffusion panels. These LC switchable diffuser panels are produced by our proprietary holographic Light Shaping Diffuser fabrication process. Using a stack of closely spaced LC switchable diffusers, which have shown excellent switching speed, diffusion efficiency, and clarity, a multiplanar volumetric 3- D display was demonstrated, projecting full-color 2-D images from a high speed spatial light modulator.

We report on the recent advances made by our groups in the technology and applications of Holographically formed Polymer Dispersed Liquid Crystal (HPDLC) devices. In this paper we will briefly review some of the basic operating principles of HPDLC devices and their salient features as applied to display and image capture applications. The usability of HPDLC films in displays is enhanced by incorporating diffusion into the films. The photopic reflectance and reflection bandwidth of an HPDLC device can be improved by stacking multiple films of HPDLC material between one set of electrodes. HPDLC mirrors can be used to advantage in an electronic image capture system.

The Norwegian based company PolyDisplay^R ASA, in collaboration with the Norwegian Army Material Command and SINTEF, has refined, developed and shown with color and black/white technology demonstrators an electrically addressed Smectic A reflective LCD technology featuring: (1) Good contrast, all-round viewing angle and readability under all light conditions (no wash-out in direct sunlight). (2) Infinite memory -- image remains without power -- very low power consumption, no or very low radiation ('silent display') and narrow band updating. (3) Clear, sharp and flicker-free images. (4) Large number of gray tones and colors possible. (5) Simple construction and production -- reduced cost, higher yield, more robust and environmentally friendly. (6) Possibility for lighter, more robust and flexible displays based on plastic substrates. The results and future implementation possibilities for cockpit and soldier-system displays are discussed.

The recent business difficulties in manufacturing avionic grade AMLCDs from scratch has focussed attention on the alternative route of remanufacturing commercial grade AMLCDs to suite the optical and environmental requirements of cockpit displays. A major difficulty in this approach has been the absence of commercially available glass with the 1:1 aspect ratio often requested, particularly for retrofits. A proven method is described which circumvents this difficulty by allowing an AMLCD to be reshaped after its original manufacture.

A performance comparison of backlights containing a tubular serpentine fluorescent lamp (TSFL), a flat fluorescent lamp (FFL), and an array of LEDs as light sources is presented. Factors such as efficacy, color rendering capability, temperature dependence and dimmability are discussed. Additionally, key parameters considered include the mechanical configuration and overall depth of the backlight system (including filters/diffusers); shock and vibration susceptibility; manufacturing complexity; and optical performance, such as luminance and uniformity.

This paper describes the STAR architecture that is being developed at Physical Optics Corporation for military and commercial use. Because the STAR architecture is based on non- imaging optics, lightpipes, and diffusers, these component technologies are described in detail. Major emphasis in this paper is on the light shaping diffuser, which functions as a non-Lambertian controlled scatterer. This diffuser is becoming a critical element of a number of military and commercial displays, and therefore we have taken the liberty to describe it in detail so that scientists and engineers can optimize their current displays in terms of brightness, uniformity, homogeneity, compactness, and ease of operation.

The Super-Anamorphic Backlighting Remote Imaging Display (SABRID) collimating system is the purpose of this paper. The SABRID transforms point light source into collimated (plane) beam. In contrast to common bulky axial-symmetry lens collimator, the highly compact SABRID has three (3) axes of symmetry. The SABRID is attractive for many civilian and military applications, when compactness and/or separation of source light power (up to 20 m) from display itself is essential for safety packaging and other purposes.

Traditional methods of marking aircraft landing zones during combat deployment operations range from simple reflective panels and colored smoke to the more elaborate strobe lighting systems and active radio frequency transceivers. Downed pilots, pathfinders, and special operations personnel are in jeopardy of detection by unfriendly ground forces, active location/direction devices act as beacons to foes as well as friends. Even passive devices can have unacceptable detection profiles. A highly directional fiber optic-based miniaturized landing director minimizes the more undesirable consequences of high profile directional devices.

The increase in air transport traffic in recent years, coupled with the projected increases in the next decade, has led to increasing interest on the part of aircraft operators in both increasing safety in the ever more crowded skies and the efficiency of the aircraft themselves. This paper describes a Visual Guidance System (VGS) for civil transport aircraft, which provides guidance, not only during takeoff, enroute and landing, but also potentially on the ground. This final stage enables the concept of 'gate-to-gate' guidance to be implemented.

The problem of 'flicker' of data presented on large area LCDs is deemed to be a major problem by the military display user community. Although the problem is certainly applicable to the display of certain types of acoustics data there are those who would expand it to cover datatypes which do not suffer from the effect. This paper describes in some detail the mechanisms within the LCD that cause the problem and extrapolates scenarios where compensation is required and where it would be redundant or detrimental. Solutions, which might be used to eliminate the effect are also described.

It has been demonstrated that commercial glass panels have an extremely wide range of applications. Previous papers have shown commercial glass panel applications as diverse as a city bus, an army howitzer and a commercial airliner. This paper shows how an aircraft such as the Navy developed P-3, as used by the US Customs Service, will eliminate its traditional electromechanical flight instruments and employ 6 X 8 commercial glass panels to totally modify its cockpit. These displays will perform all flight instrument functions; provide navigation and radar information for both pilot and copilot. This paper discusses the challenges of using commercial glass in such an application. The aircraft environment and the cockpit geometry are discussed as well as the requirements of optical performance that are placed upon the commercial glass. These requirements are then compared to the glass manufacturer's original specifications. Expected results from flight-testing are then provided.

Displays were invented just in the last century. The human visual system evolved over millions of years. The disparity between the natural world 'display' and that 'sampled' by year 2000 technology is more than a factor of one million. Over 1000X of this disparity between the fidelity of current electronic displays and human visual capacity is in 2D resolution alone. Then there is true 3D, which adds an additional factor of over 1000X. The present paper focuses just on the 2D portion of this grand technology challenge. Should a significant portion of this gap be closed, say just 10X by 2010, display technology can help drive a revolution in military affairs. Warfighter productivity must grow dramatically, and improved display technology systems can create a critical opportunity to increase defense capability while decreasing crew sizes.

The advent of US Digital Television Broadcasting in the late fall of 1998 has profoundly changed both the technology and business of 'Television' as we have grown to known it. US DTV, encompassing as it does a wide variety of 'voluntary' signal formats, presents today's broadcaster with an unparalleled choice of the 'right tool for the job.' This paper will explore the technical aspects of some of those choices and the potential for DTV equipment application to non-broadcast environments.

A proven design procedure and a core set of inviolable value- adding enhancements enabled BAE SYSTEMS' to successfully implement military integration of a COTS AMLCD.

Link-16 Data Link systems are being added to current avionics systems to provide increased situational awareness and command data. By using a single intelligent display system, the impact to existing aircraft systems to implement Link-16 capabilities is minimized. Litton Guidance & Control Systems (G&CS), a military avionics supplier for more than forty years, provides Open System Architecture (OSA), large screen aircraft display systems. Based on a common set of plug-in modules, these Smart Multi-Function Displays (SMFD) are available in a variety of sizes and processing capabilities, any one of which can meet the Link-16 requirements. Using a single smart SMFD connected to a Link-16 subsystem has many advantages. With digital moving map capability, the SMFD can monitor and display air and ground tracks of both friendly and hostile forces while providing potential threat data to the operator. The SMFD can also monitor vehicle status and mission data to share between friendly air and surface forces. To support the integrated digital battlefield, Link-16 capability is required and the Litton G&CS SMFD provides the processing/display functionality to implement this capability.

Boeing uses Active Matrix Liquid Crystal Display (AMLCD) technology in a wide variety of its aerospace products, including military, commercial, and space applications. With the demise of Optical Imaging Systems (OIS) in September 1998, the source of on-shore custom AMLCD products has become very tenuous. Reliance on off-shore sources of AMLCD glass for aerospace products is also difficult when the average life of a display product is often less than one-tenth the 30 or more years expected from aerospace platforms. Boeing is addressing this problem through the development of a Displays Process Action Team that gathers input from all display users across the spectrum of our aircraft products. By consolidating requirements, developing common interface standards, working with our suppliers and constantly monitoring custom sources as well as commercially available products, Boeing is minimizing the impact (current and future) of the uncertain AMLCD avionics supply picture.

The National Information Display Laboratory (NIDL) is chartered to ensure the most efficient and cost-effective transfer of display technologies to government applications. To assure high quality in displays acquired by the government, the NIDL conducts systematic measurement of candidate displays, guided by standards of metrology and performance. The NIDL also initiates and promulgates such standards, through bodies such as ISO, VESA, ANSI, PIMA, and IEC. This paper discusses three aspects of the quality-assurance program, which correspond to successive steps in monitor verification: (1) set up the monitor so it performs as well as possible; (2) measure it carefully in dimensions such as grayscale, color, and resolution; and (3) compare the measurements against acceptance criteria that are stringent but achievable. In each of these stages, objective measurements are supplemented (and sometimes replaced) by allowing humans to assess a variety of test patterns (some designed by NIDL). Subjective and objective tests each have advantages: human vision is the ultimate arbiter of display quality, but objective measurements are more standardizable than the judgements of individual observers. The best of both worlds would be a metric based on an objective model of human vision. Toward this goal, the NIDL has applied a vision model to display-quality problems (NIIRS prediction and impacts of screen reflection).

This paper describes Litton's time-multiplexed 3-D display technology, which allows groups of viewers to see full stereo with kineopsis (lookaround capability) without using any eye or head gear. We detail the construction of our latest 50'- screen prototype, which is brighter and has higher resolution than our 25'-prototype presented previously. The time- multiplexed concept allows the sequential projection of narrow strips of images into the viewer space and provides realistic movement parallax in a horizontal plane with full autostereoscopic images. The time-multiplexed nature allows full-screen resolution for each view and shared components for the optical trains. Our latest prototype, configured for entertainment applications, replaces our previous color sequential system with separate red, green, and blue CRTs for a brighter image [up to 120 foot-Lamberts (fL)] with much better color saturation. A new optical layout uses dichroics and beamsplitters to avoid the need for coatings with sharp cut-off frequencies, and a concave-mirror screen provides better image sharpness. We can also provide up to fifteen views in each eyebox without tube-abutment seams. Improved electronic performance provides capability of 30 frames-per- seconds interlaced at 640 by 480 pixel resolution. Special picture-shape correction circuitry has been added for a rectangular image-frame, despite a light path skewed out-of- plane.

Through the years, there has been a steady evolution of technology to ruggedize displays for harsh military environments. This work has spanned cathode-ray-tubes (CRTs) to present day active matrix liquid crystal displays (AMLCDs). Organic light emitting device (OLED) display technology has the potential to solve many of the inherent limitations of today's AMLCD technology and to provide the military system designer with a more cost effective solution. OLED technology offers bright, colorful emissive light with excellent power efficiency, wide viewing angle and video response rates; it is also demonstrating the requisite environmental robustness for a wide variety of display applications. OLED displays also have a very thin and lightweight form factor. Moreover, in full production, OLEDs are projected to be very cost-effective by comparison to AMLCDs. This paper will examine some of these advantages and the opportunities presented by the rapidly emerging OLED display technology for military applications.

The manufacture of Flat Panel Displays (FPDs) is dominated by Far Eastern sources, particularly in Active Matrix Liquid Crystal Displays (AMLCD) and Plasma. The United States has a very powerful capability in micro-displays. It is not well known that Europe has a very active research capability which has lead to many innovations in display technology. In addition there is a capability in display manufacturing of organic technologies as well as the licensed build of Japanese or Korean designs. Finally, Europe has a display systems capability in military products which is world class.

The dominance of the Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) in the specialist area of Head Up Displays (HUDs) is being challenged by Flat Panel Displays (FPDs). The luminance and contrast requirements are very demanding, a problem compounded by the low efficiency of the display devices. This paper discusses the application of transmissive or reflective Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) to the HUD and particularly reviews the illumination of the display. The conclusion is that in the near term a transmissive configuration with an RF coupled or Light Emitting Diode (LED) backlight shows most promise but that longer term micro-lasers allied with the reflective configuration should be a better solution.

This paper discusses the background to the Eurofighter Typhoon Multi-function Head-down Display development program, and the issues, concerns and benefits of transitioning from Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) to Active Matrix Liquid Crystal Display (AMLCD) technology.

Avionics displays often require custom image sources tailored to demanding program needs. Flat panel devices are attractive for cockpit installations, however recent history has shown that it is not possible to sustain a business manufacturing custom flat panels in small volume specialty runs. As the number of suppliers willing to undertake this effort shrinks, avionics programs unable to utilize commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) flat panels are placed in serious jeopardy. Rear projection technology offers a new paradigm, enabling compact systems to be tailored to specific platform needs while using a complement of COTS components. Projection displays enable improved performance, lower cost and shorter development cycles based on inter-program commonality and the wide use of commercial components. This paper reviews the promise and challenges of projection technology and provides an overview of Kaiser Electronics' efforts in developing advanced avionics displays using this approach.

The initial research request called for a Head-Up Display (HUD) that is smaller, lighter, cheaper, and more reliable HUD than currently designed. The study directives stated that advanced HUDs of classical functionality would require 0.5 cubic feet of volume, need a 28 VDC power supply, weigh 30 pounds, cost 85 K, and have a Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) of over 2000 hours. Reliability enhancements will significantly reduce the overall cost of maintenance actions. The Cathode-Ray-Tubes (CRTs) create the most significant problem for reliability to the HUD. Finding a solution for CRT replacement will solve reliability and power issues. The HUD must operate in an open cockpit with indirect sunlight. The intensity of the HUD symbology on the HUD combiner must be set to a value of approximately 1800 fL to withstand this environment. To achieve this intensity on the combiners requires that the CRT screen brightness be in excess of 5,000 fL. Operation at these high intensities causes rapid deterioration of CRT screen phosphor; thereby shortening the half-life of the CRT. The primary goal of this project was to identify existing and developing technologies as candidates for replacement of the CRT acting as the projector in the HUD. Reliability of the new projector technologies is of prime importance. The selected new technology must also add performance and quality value to the HUD symbology presentation. CRTs have a number of benefits, for example brightness, resolution, and contrast ratio, that must be achieved by a replacement technology. Of these, the most difficult to replace is contrast ratio. Size and weight of the HUD are two other concerns of the customer. The size and weight issue have already been solved by Flight Visions, Inc (FVI). Thus, this study concentrated on CRT replacement.

A brief history of the Delphi Delco Electronics Systems automotive application of Flat Panel Display (FPD) technology is reviewed. Additionally, a formal evaluation system has been developed to compare various direct-view high information content (min 1/4 VGA) Flat Panel Display technologies for automotive applications. A visual representation of selected technologies is facilitated by a 'spider-chart' graphing technique. Attributes include optical performance, temperature performance and stability, display life, technology maturity, and cost.

There is a view that the cockpit of the future might be configured without a Head Up Display (HUD) and that the HUD functions will be replaced by a Helmet Mounted Display (HMD). This paper compares the two display types and examines the obstacles to establishing an HMD as a Primary Flight Instrument. The conclusion is that the accuracy of either display with 'dumb' weapons is comparable at low level, but neither is adequate at high level. The integrity of an HMD is deemed inadequate at present.