Night Lighting and Night Vision Goggle Compatibility

Abstract

Proper lighting of aircraft instruments, panels, controls, indicators, and displays is essential in high performance aircraft. The lighting must be useable over a large range of ambient conditions; especially during dawn or dusk transitions and at night. It must be uniform, have low glare, and be continuously dimmable to very low luminance levels, so the pilot can become partially dark adapted for good, out-of-the-cockpit vision. Various aspects of cockpit lighting such as intensity levels, contrast, luminance and color uniformity, red versus white versus blue-green general lighting requirements will be noted throughout the paper because they are an important part of the overall design of the lighting system. A special area or interest is night vision goggles (NVGs) are being viewed. Methods of achieving night vision goggle compatibility in the cockpit using filtered incandescent lamps, external bezels, floodlighting, light-emitting diodes, electroluminescent lamps, microlouver material, and black flight suits are described.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Apr 01, 1988
Accession Number
ADP005790

Entities

People

  • Alan R. Pinkus

Organizations

  • Armstrong Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Sensors

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aircrafts
  • Asthenopia
  • Fixed Wing Aircraft
  • Flight Instruments
  • Horizontal Situation Indicators
  • Human Factors Engineering
  • Incandescent Lamps
  • Indicator Lights
  • Lamps
  • Light Sources
  • Lighting Equipment
  • Measurement
  • Night Vision
  • Optical Properties
  • Optics
  • Visible Spectra
  • Visual Perception

Readers

  • Aviation Science / Aeronautics.
  • Computer Vision.
  • Systems Analysis and Design