If you’re a pilot, Christmas comes twice a year in April and July. That’s when manufacturers trot out announcements of their new products at Sun ‘n Fun and AirVenture. Based on press releases by Garmin, Cessna and Diamond, Sun ‘n Fun—where I’ll be later this week—is off to a roaring start.
First, Garmin announced their Synthetic Vision Technology (SVT), which presents a 3D depiction of terrain, obstacles and traffic on the G1000’s PFD or primary flight-display. As we note below, Garmin has had this on the drawing board since they first introduced the G1000 in June, 2004. Essential, it draws on the PFD the picture that a pilot would see looking out the window on a clear day. It also…
colors higher terrain red to draw your attention to it. This sounds like a great alternate to FLIR (forward-looking infrared) technology that’s becoming available, and my guess is it will provide a clearer depiction of the outside world at a lower cost. It should be particularly useful when flying at night or in low visibility.
Next, Cessna announced that they will offer Garmin’s SVT in their Citation Mustang as a factory option later this year. Translation: it won’t be immediately available for existing Mustangs AND you will pay extra to get it. I would have preferred to see SVT included with the base G1000 software at no extra cost so that every G1000 owner will eventually have it and reap the safety benefits. Diamond announced that they will offer the product as a $9,995 option on their DA40s, so I expect Cessna will charge a similar amount. At that price, I’d expect owners of high-end aircraft to include the option, but guess that many flight schools will choose not to pay for it in their 172 trainers.
Cessna says that SVT will become available as an option for their piston and Caravan product lines within a year. You can expect that retrofits for existing G1000 aircraft will come somewhat later, since manufacturers tend to put their first efforts into shipping new options in new airplanes and worry about the retrofit market later. Cessna says that most existing G1000-equipped Cessnas will be upgradeable.
You can see a short video that shows SVT in action on the AOPA website. You can also read full details of the many features in the Garmin press release.
Garmin has supplied many sample images, however I find one irony—they all show the HSI in the 360° mode. The HSI also has a 140° arc mode, which displays just the top of the HSI along the bottom of the PFD, opening up the center of the PFD. Readers of my Max Trescott’s G1000 Glass Cockpit Handbook with WAAS may recall that I recommend against using the HSI’s arc mode and, to this day, I’ve never flown with a pilot who uses it. However, when I first trained on the G1000 several years ago, I heard that the HSI’s arc mode had been included for use with a future 3D terrain feature—which is obviously SVT.
I’ve long said that when glass cockpits like the Garmin G1000 become a substantial part of the general aviation fleet, we’ll see a significant reduction in accidents. Just this past weekend, I was teaching G1000 seminars for iFLY , the southern California company that offers memberships in their fleet of G1000-equipped Columbia/Cessna 350s. I mentioned that unless your G1000 aircraft is equipped with TAWS (iFLY’s are), you can still fly into the side of a mountain with no audible warning. Synthetic Vision Technology goes a long way toward eliminating that possibility, since you can see the obstacles coming at you on the PFD. I hope most G1000 owners agree and install it in their airplanes as soon as it becomes available.