Archived Posts » 59,859,448
NV in COLOR?!?
3/12/2012 10:59:50 PM
http://marinesmagazine.dodlive.mil/2012/03/12/color-nvgs/
what is this voodoo?
is this legit? if so... 
what is this voodoo?
is this legit? if so... 3/12/2012 11:19:53 PM
Cool....
If your color blind would they look the same?
3/13/2012 11:39:00 AM
Yes, it's for real. It's a new digital technology being worked on for DOD right now.
3/13/2012 1:35:15 PM
I need 3
3/13/2012 2:05:56 PM
Don't know how it works... but I like it.
3/13/2012 7:19:15 PM
They use color wheels synchronised with a white phosphor tube - but have limitations in terms of light due to available spectrum at night - eg, starlight tends not to provide much light in the red-blue-green areas and the IR will be masked for color accuracy - not a great situation. But it does allow medics to see blood and stuff which can be handy.
I'd like to see one operate under starlight conditions - but it doesn't take a genius to work out that it's going to suffer from photon depletion far sooner than a normal green system. Normal NV uses the entire available spectrum ( From green to infrared ) at the same time = more light. These systems can only use a narrow band of spectrum at any one time.
They have been developing stuff like this all over the world - even the universities where I live had a crack at it a few years ago.
They are also working on a digital model - it will suffer similar issues but some of the new digital technology can provide much higher gain so should work under some low-moonlight levels and possibly even starlight and being able to mix sensors means you can make fusion enhanced or feed in additional infra-red channel information when the light is low - kind of how low-light CCD cameras switch from color to black and white when the lights go out.
Fun stuff, but limited by practicalities of the environment in which it's being used - though perhaps in the future they will minimise color sensors and use computer processing to add "false color" that is similar to what should be there? That is quite possible but I don't think that's even being researched at the moment.
Regards
David
