I've watched many instrument rated pilots struggle to use the standby round-attitude indicator in a glass cockpit when the G1000 displays were displayed. And by "struggle", I mean fly into a mountain or lose control in the sim. When those of us that learned in a 6 pack think back to our training, it's hard for us to comprehend, because a back-up attitude indicator, ANYWHERE in the cockpit, would have been a godsend compared to the effective-attitude indicator of combining the turn-rate indicator with the altimeter and re-directing your 90% scan to those two instruments.


The instructor tries to teach you scanning "technique" and how to divide up your time, but you really don't learn this much with a glass display and everything co-located. As mentioned above, you CAN isolate the correct parameters and teach HOW to scan instruments with a glass display, but it takes a lot more understanding on the instructor's part and this sadly is not the rule, more the exception. It's also just as much about inputting and maintaining control inputs as it is "scanning". What I've seen over and over again when the "glass-trained" instrument pilot is given 6-pack instrument failures (and even without failures) is they tend to "bounce" their scan around randomly or try to spend an equal time on each instrument. When you get to the advanced level, where you should end up in either cockpit-setup, you move your eyes to the place they should go for whatever it is you are doing. You "know" that you can estimate and bank on the AI so you set your estimates then check back with your supporting instruments like your altimeter/vsi and turn rate or heading. You know if you are turning for a while, you don't have to look at the heading right away, or that if nothing has changed there's no need to scan certain instruments nearly as frequently, the longer you look away from attitude, the worse it gets.