Enhanced Head-Up Display for General Aviation aircraft

General aviation (GA) as a means of transportation, can be safe and time efficient given favorable flying conditions. However, when instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) prevail the pilot must rely on his or her ability to navigate and safely land the aircraft using instrumentation that has undergone little change in the past fifty years. Gauges and dials are used to determine the spatial orientation of the aircraft rather than the intuitive "out the window view" used during visual meteorological conditions (VMC). It is common knowledge that VMC flight requires far less skill, and thus is inherently safer than IMC flight, particularly for low-time instrument rated pilots. The GA cockpit could be modernized by combining an attitude and heading reference system (AHRS) and a global positioning system (GPS) receiver with advanced display technology. Attitude information, coupled with GPS-derived position and velocity information, can be used to display to the pilot an "out the window view" on a novel head-up type of display. Overlapping the display with the outside world provides the pilot with a better understanding of the aircraft flight path and he or she is not spending valuable time struggling to determine the aircraft's position and orientation relative to the runway.