A Comparative Analysis of Cockpit Display Development Tools

<p>Currently no standard methodology exists that enables cockpit display engineers to evaluate software tools used in the development of graphical cockpit displays. Furthermore little research has been accomplished in comparing current software development tools with traditional hand-coded methods. This research effort discusses a framework for analyzing cockpit display software development tools and follows through with a detailed analysis comparing today's hand-coding standard OpenGL with two of today's cockpit display software development suites Virtual Application Prototyping System (VAPS) and Display Editor. The comparison exploits the analysis framework establishing the advantages and disadvantages of the three software development suites. The analysis framework is comprised of several detailed questionnaires that enable the cockpit engineer to quantify important subjective criteria such as learning curve user interface readability portability extensibility and maintenance. The questionnaires developed for each subjective criterion contain questions with weighted answers that enable the cockpit engineer to evaluate graphical software development tools. The questions were adapted from multiple sources including personal experience display experts pilots navigators case tool and text sources. In addition the comparative analysis evaluates several objective criteria with respect to development tools and the displays generated with them such as update rate development time executable size and CPU/Memory usage level.</p><p>This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore you will see the original copyright references library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world) and other notations in the work.</p><p>This work is in the public domain in the United States of America and possibly other nations. Within the United States you may freely copy and distribute this work as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.</p><p>As a reproduction of a historical artifact this work may contain missing or blurred pages poor pictures errant marks etc. Scholars believe and we concur that this work is important enough to be preserved reproduced and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.</p><br>