ABSTRACT
The glare in the visual field during nighttime flying is a potentially insecure problem for the pilots as it reduces the contrast of the visual target and causes psychological discomfort. However, with the increase of the age of the pilots, the glare sensitivity will be changed for the same lighting condition because of the different physiological condition of the eyes. This may result in the variance of the visual performance in nighttime flying especially for the reaction speed to the obstacle out of the cockpit.
In this article several lighting conditions with difference glare source luminance, background luminance and glare source size will be set up to simulate different degrees of glare. Participants will be divided into two groups according to the age, namely the young group and the old group. The reaction time was selected as the evaluation criteria of the visual performance. Subjective evaluation for each lighting condition is also necessary as it is the direct performance about the glare sensitivity physiologically and psychologically. With rigorous data analysis, the glare sensitivity of different age groups was figure out according to the change tendency of the visual performance based on the experiment data.
