An airborne synthetic vision system with HITS symbology using X-Plane for a head up display

Highway-in-the-sky (HITS) trajectories and symbology were generated for GPS WAAS approach procedures developed for the NASA small aircraft transportation system (SATS) demonstration flights. Aircraft position and attitude data collected using an integrated IMU/GPS were used to render synthetic ground imagery and highway-in-the-sky (HITS) symbology using the X-Plane program in real-time. Flight testing showed that synthetic imagery using actual aircraft data can be used for aircraft guidance and for situational awareness, as well as for post flight playback and analysis. The availability of high quality scenery and elevation data as well as the existence of a software development kit allowed use of the X-Plane flight simulation program as a high performance and inexpensive rendering platform. This proved the feasibility of building an inexpensive synthetic vision system to generate synthetic imagery on a low cost head up display (HUD) designed for general aviation type aircraft.