Synthetic Vision Systems (SVS) provide an aircraft pilot with a virtual 3-D image of surrounding terrain which is generated from a digital elevation model stored in an onboard database. SVS improves the pilot's situational awareness at night and in inclement weather, thus reducing the chance of accidents such as controlled flight into terrain. A terrain database integrity monitor is needed to verify the accuracy of the displayed image due to potential database and navigational system errors. Previous research has used existing aircraft sensors to compare the real terrain position with the predicted position. We propose an improvement to one of these models by leveraging the stream computing capabilities of commercial graphics hardware. "Brook for GPUs," a system for implementing stream computing applications on programmable graphics processors, is used to execute a streaming ray-casting algorithm that correctly simulates the beam characteristics of a radar altimeter during all phases of flight.

This thesis is analysing the historical evolution of flight instruments and aims at the design of a new, enhanced cockpit that includes basic flight instruments supplemented by data from selected aircraft subsystems. The design is based on currently available electronic instruments, known as EFIS, presently used onboard Boeing 737-800 cockpit. The proposed design aims at improvements to graphic style of EFIS, and accomodation of new data into newly designed displays. As a result of this effort, a set of design concepts is created. Those are then implemented as fully functional set of displays using custom made user interface system design tool.

This work describes the visualization design of the flight related quantities in a cockpit of a modern light sport aircraft. It focuses on the utilization of the state of the art trends in flight data displays and introduces the innovative implementation of the aircraft's energy state smart clues that reduce pilots' workload. The initial part of the work presents a research into the flight, engine and navigation data presentation on analog instruments, followed by their illustrative depiction in glass cockpits. Within the framework of this thesis, Microsoft Flight Simulator has been used as a source of the flight related data. Final advances in the display design were introduced through the implementation of the synthetic vision system and a visualization of the virtual tunnel in the sky.