Yes, the glare of the sun definitely makes things more problematic. Most problematic of all for me was when I was flying on the North Sea, and landing offshore into the setting sun, with the sun's glare being reflected off the surface. Polarized glasses made all the difference - I could look directly into the glare, then inside at the unlit instrument panel and see everything without any difficulty. I am aware of some problems associated with polarized glasses; LED displays tended to be filtered out, for instance, but our aircraft did not have thak kind of display. For me, the glasses cured the problem completely.
I guess it might be different for the chaps in the situation you describe, but it's what we are paid for, after all.