A Commercial Aviation Safety Team (CAST) study of 18 worldwide loss-ofcontrol accidents and incidents determined that the lack of external visual references was associated with a flight crew’s loss of attitude awareness or energy state awareness in 17 of these events. CAST recommended development and implementation of virtual day-Visual Meteorological Condition (VMC) display systems, such as synthetic vision systems, to promote flight crew attitude awareness similar to a day-VMC environment. This paper describes the results of a joint NASA/NAMRU-D study that evaluated virtual day-VMC displays and a “background attitude indicator” concept as an aid to pilots in recovery from unusual attitudes. Experimental results and future research directions under this CAST initiative and the NASA “Technologies for Airplane State Awareness” research project are described.