Perceived Orientation of a Runway Model in Nonpilots during Simulated Night Approaches to Landing

Illusions due to reduced visual cues at night have long been cited as contributing to the dangerous tendency of pilots to fly too low during night landing approaches. The cue of motion parallax (a difference in rate of apparent movement of objects in the visual field) is frequently suggested as contributing to visual judgments of glide path but has not been systematically studied in relation to the night approach problem. Thus, the present experiment examined the effect of varying levels of motion parallax from both radial and vertical motion on perception of the orientation of a runway relative to the ground.