Thales Synthetic Vision System (SVS)

Thales Synthetic Vision System provides pilots with clear and intuitive means of understanding their flying environment anytime, anywhere. It delivers new piloting interface by replacing conventional sky and ground depiction on Primary Fight Display (PFD) with a 3D representation of the external surroundings including terrain, obstacles and other topographical data or symbology features.

SVS to Increase Flight Safety

Thales Synthetic Vision System is a proven solution to increase pilots’ situational awareness and reduce workload, specifically during demanding situations like low visibility weather conditions, unfamiliar airports, high pitch rate phase of flight, specific procedures, terrain with relief… Pilots will more easily detect errors before the aircraft enters a dangerous situation.

As a consequence, it will increase overall flight safety, having for instance a significant impact on reducing the number of non-stabilized approaches and approach destabilization. It will help the crew in dynamic go around phase of flight and it will reduce the risk of Loss Of Control in Flight (LOC-I) and Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT) for all kinds of aircraft.

Unusual Altitudes Management

In excessive Roll or Pitch, Thales SVS Solution consists of adding a classical Sky/Earth indicator superimposed on the SVS image with transparency. This helps pilots retrieve a safe attitude by focusing on pitch and roll information while keeping the SVS Image in the peripheral field of view. As the SVS is not desactivated, the pilot is not being destabilized.

Display Adaptation

If the aircraft position accuracy is degraded of a value for which terrain representation is still appropriate but not the landing area, Thales SVS Solution consists of seamlessly blurring and enlarging the runway or helipad. As a consequence, the crew still benefits from the SVS situational awareness knowing that the actual landing area is located inside the enlarged and blurred representation.

Innovative Eyes-Out Representation

Thales SVS Solution for Eyes-Out displays is a unique solution keeping fully transparent flat terrain while highlighting only relief showing slope variation (in particular through ridge lines and slope). This allows reduced clutter of the whole display and eases visual acquisition of the points of interest on the external scene (approach lights, runway, helipad, …).

Operating Costs Reduced

In addition to safety improvement, Thales Synthetic Vision System enables aircraft operators to achieve significant savings on operating costs. Combined with its intuitive symbology for landing, it is an effective assistance for pilots to improve approach stabilization, thus reducing number of missed approaches or hard landing.

 

Additionally, the Thales SVS is an efficient solution to ease the training of pilots, guaranteeing a high level of successful sessions, especially for cadet pilots.

Mission Capabilities

From a mission point of view, Thales Synthetic Vision System improves performance during specific operations like low-level flight. In addition, Thales SVS offers the capability to display conformal traffic and waypoint representation.

Mature Thales Database

For more than 15 years, Thales terrain, runway and later obstacle databases have cumulated more than 21 million flight hours onboard Airbus, ATR, Boeing, Sikorsky and Sukhoi aircraft, and is EASA certified.

When in-service, Thales provides a 28-day update available online.

Operational Credits

Associated with high performance localization system, Thales SVS is compliant with regulations to enable operations with lower minima for landing (Synthetic Vision and Guidance System).