Developing the next generation cockpit display system

The goal of advanced cockpit display systems is to present large amounts of information quickly and in an understandable format, enabling the aviator to improve mission performance. Wright Laboratory is developing a program to dramatically improve current display systems. Current front-line cockpit display systems utilize low-resolution analog video to present two dimensional (2-D) images on many separate displays. The future cockpit will be capable of integrating large picture digital video with three dimensional (3-D) and 2-D color images. This system will be capable of rendering icons, maps, and world-views. It will be compatible with head mounted displays and multiple large displays to improve war-planning and combat aviator situational awareness. We are developing a massively parallel 3D renderer which will be capable of updating 500,000 3-D triangles per second with shading, lighting, transparency, texture mapping, and hidden surface removal. The renderer design, based on a University of North Carolina pixel planes design, employs a massively parallel architecture. The rendering system will be small enough to fit on one board, extensible to dual-seat configuration, and capable of up to eight windows per display channel.