The Effects of Scene Complexity on Judgements of Aimpoint during Final Approach

Abstract

To study the effect of five levels of scene complexity on performance of a final approach task, ten different animations representing combinations of scene complexity and distance intervals to threshold were modeled. For the experiment task, seven subjects were required to estimate the perceived point of impact as an extrapolation of the final approach path. The results indicated that there was a significant interaction between scene complexity and distance to the actual impact point for both horizontal and vertical components of the judgement task. In addition, increasing the level of terrain complexity lead to better performance in judgements of horizontal displacement, however, the results for vertical displacements were unclear. The relationship between errors and performance for the experiment tasks are discussed.