Product Review

Introduction

When glass cockpits were first introduced, they brought with them a new dimension to flying and aircraft and cockpit management. Like any technology, it has continued to develop at a fast pace with additional functionality being incorporated and more advanced glass cockpit suites available. This functionality now goes way beyond just being a replacement for the old analogue primary flight instruments and engine management instruments. A more recent innovation to improve cockpit situational awareness has been the introduction of Synthetic Vision Systems.

Now, every once in a while, a developer will bring out an interesting utility to enhance the flight simulator experience. Carenado have done just that in releasing the Synthetic Vision System (SVS) to complement their range of aircraft with a Garmin G1000 class cockpit. Well renowned for their excellent range of add-on aircraft, Carenado's SVS takes piloting aircraft with a Garmin G1000 glass cockpit to a new dimension.

History

Developed by NASA and the United States Air Force in the later part of the 20th Century, the SVS was seen as a means by which to improve cockpit situational awareness using three dimensional images to provide pilots with a clear and intuitive means of understanding their flying environment. An SVS provides situational awareness to the pilot by using terrain, obstacle, geopolitical, hydrological and other databases from a set of databases stored on board the aircraft, an image generator computer, and a display. The navigation solution is obtained through the use of GPS and inertial reference systems. The projected path of the aircraft, in perspective view, is depicted using "Highway In The Sky". This provides the pilot with an instantaneous understanding of the current, as well as the future, state of the aircraft with respect to the terrain, towers, buildings and other environment features.

NASA initiated industry involvement with major avionics manufacturers in early 2000 and the first FAA certified application of a synthetic vision system occurred in 2009. Since then, many newer glass cockpit systems, such as the Garmin G1000, and the Rockwell Collins Pro Line Fusion, offer synthetic terrain. In 2017, Avidyne Corporation certified Synthetic Vision capability for all of its IFD Series GPS based Flight Management Systems. However, in an ironic historical note, recreational uses of synthetic vision with Bruce Artwick's original FS1 Flight Simulator preceded its application in aircraft.

Availability and Installation

The Carenado Synthetic Vision System is currently available direct from Carenado and Carenado resellers as a download only product (some resellers also offer a master back-up CD / DVD service for a minor additional cost). It is normally priced at US$29.95, or the equivalent on currency cross rates. The download file size is 78MB and it requires 100MB of HDD / SSD space for installation. An activation key is issued on purchase and is used during installation and the installation process is intuitive and seamless.

Once installed, a "first run" of the SVS is required to enable it for the respective aircraft. The manual details this and some important information regarding firewalls and anti-virus exceptions. These are important to ensure the product runs correctly.

Features

The following are the major features of the SVS:

Aircraft Compatibility

The following current Carenado aircraft are compatible with the Carenado SVS:

A Smack to the Face with "4 by 2"

The Sceptic. Let's start with an admission! I generally do not find add-on utilities terribly exciting or beneficial, to the point of finding some of them to be very twee. For my flight simming requirements, I often find such products to consist of a sweet sugary coating and sometimes lacking in any real substance. When I initially saw the release of the SVS, packaged with the Cessna 172SP G1000 product, my first impression was, "looking forward to the aircraft, but I don't care too much for the SVS.". Now, this is coming from someone who owns all the Carenado G1000 equipped aircraft and uses them both regularly and extensively in all manner of flying situations. Well, how wrong could I be, and even about my own flight simming requirements. This is one of the beauties about such a product, it grows on you. No, in fact, the SVS did not just grow on me, it smacked me right between the eyes with a solid piece of "4 by 2"!

The Scenario. My first opportunity to test the SVS occurred on my weekly Sunday night fly-in, a multiplayer session with an insane bunch of reprobates (Mutley's Hangar Crew). At the time, we were flying a route traversing the south island of New Zealand using real world weather, and the conditions were atrocious. Talk about the "Land of the Long White Cloud", this cloud was continuous and "very solid". Believe me when I tell you that this is an intrepid bunch of flyers, slightly procedural, "Did you check gear up?", "What gear?", "Your landing gear!", "It's fixed.", "Oh, I didn't know it was broken.", seat of your pants, flying circus. We were flying small GA aircraft and it was a perfect scenario to test the Carenado SVS.

The Eye Opener. I chose the Carenado Cessna T182T Skylane. We were flying out of a small "farm strip" and after activating all the SVS functionality and displays on the Garmin G1000 PFD, the three dimensional world comes to life in the cockpit. The first and most obvious thing was the SVS displayed how the runway sloped left to right in front of me. This took some getting used to and added a new dimension to "trusting your instruments". Beyond this the three dimensional image of the mountains was, to say the least, impressive. This was going to be interesting as the first flight leg required an immediate climb to about 8,000 feet to clear the mountains, but at 2,000 feet you passed into the cloud layer. OK, so not exactly procedural flying, but who cares, we certainly didn't, that's why we do it. This is when I first realised the power of the SVS. Looking out the cockpit window, I couldn't see past the wing tip, back to the PFD and the three dimensional world, with mountain ridges and detailed valleys, was presented for me to just pick my course through the mountains. In the meantime, my fellow reprobates are screaming over the session voice call trying to pick their route through the "solid clouds". Enough said, I was sold!

What is the SVS. The SVS depicts a forward looking attitude display of the topography immediately in front of the aircraft. The SVS information is shown on the PFD with a field of view 30 degrees to the left and 35 degrees to the right. The depicted imagery is derived from the aircraft attitude, heading, GPS three dimensional position, and a nine arc-second database of terrain, and other relevant features. The terrain data resolution of nine arc-seconds, meaning that the terrain elevation contours are stored in squares measuring nine arc-seconds on each side, is required for the operation of SVS and it covers the entire planet. Access to this terrain data is provided by the three year licence to access the WebSimConnect SVS Cloud service.

Product Link

Developer's product page