AGSSS: The Airborne Graphics Software Support System; an Ada/PHIGS-Based Display Editor for the Rapid Development of Cockpit Display Software Systems

Abstract

Over the past decade, the performance of digital graphics systems has increased several-fold. At the same time, the size of the hardware has been reduced and high performance airborne systems are now feasible. As a result, complex, three dimensional, pictorial, real time display formats can now be supported. Unfortunately, the increase in display complexity results in a significant increase in the software requirements. Additionally, dynamic displays, such as used in avionics, have a two part software problem. First, the display format and all its elements must be explicitly defined. Second, the connection must be established to the rest of the avionics. Overall, graphics software development is a truly time and labor intensive task. The goal of the AGSSS is to provide a graphics software development support environment. The AGSSS consists of four parts: the Graphics Editor for creating the format program, the Actions Editor for creating the driver software for the display dynamics, the Display Test Manager which allows the user to test the new software within the workstation, and the Display Program Integrator which creates the final software source modules tuned to the target system hardware.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 1991
Accession Number
ADA243224

Entities

People

  • Donna M. Jewell
  • James V. Aanstoos
  • R. J. Montoya
  • Ramasubramanian Suresh
  • Timothy L. Turner

Organizations

  • RTI International

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Compilers
  • Computer Program Documentation
  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Programs
  • Computers
  • Engineering
  • Flight Simulators
  • High Level Languages
  • Object Code
  • Operating Systems
  • Programming Languages
  • Software Development
  • Software Prototyping
  • Systems Engineering
  • Test Beds
  • Three Dimensional

Fields of Study

  • Computer science
  • Engineering

Readers

  • Computer Science.
  • Human-Computer Interaction (HCI).