Application of large head-box aircraft transparency distortion measurement and compensation for improved cueing in helmet-mounted displays

Abstract

See-through distortion can occur when a pilot looks through a curved aircraft transparency because of a weak lens effect. A helmet-mounted display (HMD) system must either compensate for this distortion or incur a distortion error in its total error budget. We describe a method for characterization of and compensation for aircraft transparency distortion, allowing for increased targeting accuracy and reduced binocular vergence errors from any position within a large head box. We present techniques for compensating for transparency distortion for the entire HMD head box and implications observed based on applying these techniques for A-10 and F-16 aircraft transparencies.