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Abstract

The research discussed in this paper focuses on the influence of physical motion and visual display field of view on the perception and control of self-motion direction in unstructured optical flow environments. In an experiment the visual display field of view and the motion cues were systematically varied to identify their effects on the pilot behavioural response. To understand the dynamic properties of human visual and motion perception a cybernetic approach is taken. The experiment confirmed that performance was significantly better when the error is presented explicitly. The addition of peripheral vision, however, did not affect performance. When physical motion is added, the performance is not influenced when presenting the error explicitly, but with implicit presentation of the error, an increase of performance was found. With an increase of motion cues the visual perception gain increases. Tentatively, pilots are more confident to act on the visual information available in flow displays. When the amount of physical motion is increased the motion perception gain decreases. Apparently, pilots try harder to perceive the motion when less physical motion is provided. When using implicit presentations of the error pilots rely more heavily on motion cues. When using flow field presentations, the visual time delay of the pilot increases approximately 150 [ms]. Using the implicit presentation of the error increasing the visual display field of view also leads to an increase in the time to perceive visual cues. The increase is approximately 20 [ms] and is significant. The pilots also rely more heavily on motion cues in this case.