Thermal vs NVG

[hermosabeach]

I found a video showing a new thermal scope VS NVG


Kinda interesting

https://vimeo.com/126031461

https://vimeo.com/125543308

[OpticsPlanet]

Exciting to see thermal technology advancing!

Tim G.

[brando]

They are two very distinct sensors with their own set of pros and cons. That's why the current military state-of-the-art is a fusion of both. That gives the visibility advantages of image intensification with the acquisition advantage of thermal.

[Sunday]

sad the price is so high !

[brando]

Keep in mind, 20 years ago most thermal imagers were so big they had to be mounted on vehicles and often externally cooled by refrigeration systems. That's why you could sneak up on a fixed TOW site at night just by listening for the refrigeration pump to turn on every now and then (true story from an FTX). Now thermal imagers have been miniaturized and are uncooled. That latter development you can thank Astronomy for.

[teflondog]

I wish I could afford both. Hopefully with all the technological advances in optics, the prices will go down in the near future.

[Gatordev]

Something to keep in mind about that first video...he says it's the local airport with "poor lighting." That's actually insanely bright for NVGs, which is why it's so hard to see a lot the objects. Projecting some sort of IR light (illuminator, search light, etc) can help off-set the bloom of the hangar lights. Also something to keep in mind about NVGs is that they detect near-IR, as well, so heat sources like exhausts and fires can also bloom the image.

The quality of that IR imager was amazing for the size, though.

[as_rocketman]

Yep.

From my own experience with NV and LWIR, the NVG video is a bit poorer quality than you could expect with a quality Gen 3 setup -- you can expect less bloom from bright, direct lights than we see here, and the image field will be flatter rather than fading at the edges, which I presume is an artifact of their setup.

The IR video is of astonishing quality. Far better than the LN2-cooled instruments I did my graduate work with, that's for sure... I note the video cheats a little calling attention to features that are much easier for IR than most people think, like granular images of gravel (a slam dunk, as different bits of gravel have different emissivity, but in this nighttime image may be assumed to be all in thermal equilibrium), and there probably aren't any thermally challenging or confusing targets like running engines, dripping hot fluids, exhaust plumes, reflections of hot objects, etc.

In other words, the test is hardly fair, and is designed to show the IR in the best possible light. But despite that I am still impressed.

NVG and IR certainly do have different strengths. With really good NVGs you can often detect targets easier because of their shadows, whereas with IR there are no shadows in all but the weirdest situations. NVGs also are better at spotting things like stripes and insignias, logos, printed patterns, etc. There are also ways to hide from IR that work poorly with NVG. But the converse is also true -- in deep cover, a smart adversary is almost impossible to spot with NVG but may give itself away easily to IR.

In any case, the technology has made an awful lot of progress. But don't discount the software. There is a great deal of calibration, autoscaling, and image flattening going on to produce those images... stuff as simple as deciding whether to make the crosshair light or dark takes careful thought. I'd be interested to see if it works as well in different environments.

[OpticsPlanet]

Not only you have the obvious differences of less blooming with thermal, but the added benefit of being able to use thermal in the daytime as well.

George P.

[rero360]

I had a couple of thermal devices at my disposal on my last deployment, a OASYS UTC, two UTMs, and a Vectronix LRTV, plus the CROWS on the MAXX-PRO. the image quality on the LRTV was amazing, it was a bit big, bulky, heavy, and noisy, but nothing compared to a LRAS (obviously, the former being man portable and the latter not)

[Gatordev]

Display quality can have a lot to do with the image, as well. The current generation FLIR system I use now has a substantially better image for both heat and fused imaging, compared to the system on the older aircraft, but I think we get cheated with the image quality because the actual display is of a lower resolution than what the camera/FLIR can actually resolve. Having DTV on top of all that is a huge bonus, though.

[goodlookin1]

I will have the privilege of reviewing one of these new IRD Hunter series 12 micron scopes very soon

Let's just say that I nearly had to change my pants when I looked through a new Patrol model...... it was so sensitive, it literally showed the veins in people's arms! Crazy, amazing tech.