As an intern 25+ years ago I had an assignment to draw up mocks for a new UH-1N interface based on pilot feedback. There were a lot of rules (I think all under the umbrella of "MIL-SPEC"), but I think the one that sunk in the most was that the design had to work in monochrome. Depending on shades and colors breaks the design for the color-blind but also ruins interactions in bad lighting conditions, wearing helmets, etc.

It was a bigger, bolder look than was common on desktop computers, and I've always personally loved the style. There was a brief rise of similar rules in the civilian world as things moved mobile and we had to work on small screens with big fingers, but the direction now is to try to remove anything that might hint of interaction from the screen entirely. (Not a fan of this myself!)

I've been in civilian work pretty much ever since so I have no idea how things have changed since then. Edit: on second glance I think a lot of the same principles are still in effect. While colorful I'm not sure that anything depends on reading the color, and seen from the pilot's chair it probably isn't all that crowded.

tangentially, your point about meaningful shades/colors breaking the design for non-color-blind people situationally is a great example of the need to always keep accessibility in mind

There are many design guidelines and studies for A&D (aerospace and defense); everything from which typeface to use, to how to display quantities and directions. I am not away of any comprehensive style guide or all-encompassing name for it.

> Wonder how big the manual for flight simulator game would be. One manual for the F-14B is about 1k pages, so I would assume this would clock in significantly more than that due to the added capabilities (in information at least, possibly not pages due to the F-14 being pre-HOTAS and things like that http://server.3rd-wing.net/public/Ked/natops%20F14B.pdf

Looking at the picture, that's surprisingly sparse.