This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Ununnilium: Were the starlight scope helmets in Jurassic Park done correctly?
Keenath: Yes, I think so. You see correct starlight scopes more often than correct infrared cameras. Basically, any time you see something in hypnotic false-color, it's wrong (unless they're scientists experimenting with thermal flows). But like I said, half the time you see "starlight vision" for the background, with living creatures picked out in false-color -- which is totally wrong, it's a melding of two utterly different technologies.
BT The P: Actually, the military has been trying out a system that does combine both a thermal imager and a starlight optics system. But it isn't in general use yet, and all it ammounts to is a black-and-white overlay of warm objects on the green-vision scope, so it still wouldn't look like pred-vision.
TK 3997: Acutally it's basiclly ready for service acutally it might already be in use http://www.defensetech.org/archives/003732.html
. the “Combined mode” which shows the targets “thermal signature as an outline on a green background.” Sound rather like what you see in many video games, which often just happen to take place 20 minutes into the future...
You think Predator Vision would be a snappier name for when they get it wrong, or is that ambiguous?
(random passer-by): There's more overlap between these technologies than you might think. Prior to thermal imaging systems becoming the night vision technology of choice, at least for armored vehicles and heavy weapons like antitank missile launchers, there was "starlight" passive image intensification technology that worked by tremendously amplifying ambient light. What is less known is that "starlight" systems are set up specifically to detect infrared and near-infrared light. This may seem counter-intuitive, but it is done this way in order to allow infrared spotlights and floodlights to be used for illumination. And the "starlight" technologies of the 1970s were based on earlier 1940s-1950s active-infrared night vision gear anyway--goggles, TV cameras set up as weapon sights, etc., that operated in the infrared only and did not work without infrared illumination of some sort that was much "brighter" than mere body heat or vehicle engines.
Oh, and a thermal imaging system, whether it is set to display white-hot or white-cold, can actually see pretty darn well in rough terrain or thick vegetation in total darkness. Rocks and earth and vegetation are all warmed to slightly different temperatures during the day due to differential absorption of sunlight and ambient heat, and after dark they radiate the heat away into the cooler air. With military grade thermal imaging gear, temperature differences of tenths of a degree are quite visible and provide quite a bit of contrast to the user.
Oh, and the green background stuff effect goes back to the earliest night vision gear of the World War II era. The displays in the scope eyepieces were basically little cathode ray tubes (TV screens, sort of) with a green monochrome phosphor coating on the interior of the screen. Green was cheap, the chemical mixture was already common in the industry because it was the color of choice for oscilloscope displays and similar devices, and the human eye is normally most sensitive to green light, so it made the image clearer for most users. But yeah, the green monochrome displays were supplanted in the 80s and 90s, and I am not aware of an application where a green monochrome display is used with a thermal imaging device. Not because it's technically infeasible, but why bother with obsolescent 1950s black-and-white-TV monochrome green displays when the 21st Century can do so much better, cheaply?
Ununnilium: Is there a reason this is in Guns and Gunplay Tropes?
