The end of that ugly green night vision?

A REVOLUTIONARY night-vision system developed for the Dutch military makes night-time video images look as clear and colourful as those shot in broad daylight

The detectors in night-vision cameras only pick up a limited range of wavelengths, so do not give enough information to generate a colour image, while thermal imaging cameras pick up no colour information at all. In both systems, the image is displayed in various intensities of green or grey, the colours people find easiest to see.

TNO's new system works by sampling the colours in daytime scenes of the same kind as are being viewed, and mapping them onto the night-vision images.



The system selects random pixels from the daytime image to obtain a sample of the range of colours in a typical environment. So a pastoral scene would have browns from the trees, greens from the grass, vegetation and tree canopies, and blues for the sky.

In conventional night-vision equipment these colours appear in monochrome shades. The new system maps these shades onto their colour equivalents, assigning say a light grey to the blue of the sky, or a deep, dark grey to the brown of tree trunks. When the system is later used to view a target scene at night, the mapping is reversed, replacing monochrome pixels in the night image with the closest matching colour from the sample image.

Toet envisages that night-vision goggles using the technology will have a range of settings - rural, urban, sea or desert, for example - each with its own mapping. A more advanced system could use GPS positioning data to choose colours based on the specific location where the system is being used.

The system's inventors hope it will improve soldiers' reaction times and reduce the fatigue that develops from scrutinising night images. Preliminary tests on 12 subjects have shown the colour-enhanced images radically improve people's ability to recognise objects.

The technology is being developed into a prototype for night-time helicopter manoeuvres.

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My opinion : at first I was enthusiastic (colorfull nightvision wow!), but that 3rd image doesn't look so great, besides the whole process looks too complicated. However for pilots it may be good. we will see how it will end. Your opinions?

thats awesome!!! dont know if the u.s. military is on to somthin similar but i be proud to get those for the grunts and helo aviators.

that would be cool and then have some kind of clear paint of stain on our troops uniforms that would show up on a US apache helo that might help against some friendly fire accidents

it looks exactly like thermal vision to me or whatever it is that they use that looks just like that.

I don't know how this works, but if I think a bright white of a grunt would easily stand out against the grey of the surrounding forest. But heck, if it makes the life of an average grunt easier, then go ahead with it, it should be quite useful.

I have to agree I think the bright white figure is easy to spot, but I do see that he color image does give you bit more depth and allows you to see distance a little better.

YAY for the dutch...lol

I do agree with Longbow though on his last comment, however this is a step in the right direction I suppose.

Originally posted by zakattack
that would be cool and then have some kind of clear paint of stain on our troops uniforms that would show up on a US apache helo that might help against some friendly fire accidents

the US cause alot of those
good idea if it works

Hey come-one now the U.S. doesn't cause that many friendly fire accidents when you consider the amount of operations we run per day. Friendly fire accidents are bound to happen, according to our old pal Murphy.

West Point,

You are right in the in terms of the number of sorties of US forces the number of Blue-on-Blue (that is the technical term for friendly fire) incidents is a small percentage.

The problem is that that small percentage is higher and more widely publicised than any other nation.

Look at the figures for casualties in Desert Storm, specifically UK casualties.

Cheers

BHR

Yeah I know, poor Brits they always seem to be on the receiving end of a friendly fire accident. Also recently the Italian agents was also a victim of friendly fire

Blue on Blue can't really at present be countered effectivally, although they appear to be working on a IFF system.

Sadly, its usally us brits or the Canadians on the recieving end of Friendly fire and sadly that friendly fire usally comes from uncle sam, it happens on both sides [AKA The UK have had Friendly fire issues, so has nearly every combantant in the sandbox at the moment] but the military are developing ways to prevent such loss of life.

- Phil

[edit on 15-4-2005 by gooseuk]

I think the U.S. military is producing small penny sized chips that can be sown into a sliders clothing and it sends out a signal at a certain frequency. Then each soldier with a handheld detection system can know where one another is.
This could be good for when troops are taken hostage, but they would have to keep switching the frequency so that the enemy doesn't know what it is.

The U.S is working on a system that combines night vision with infrared. It looks cool, but not as cool as this color night vision.

adding a bit of color to it would make it easier to adapt to it. You curently have to take a few days training to fully adapt to NV. I was playing around with some NVG a couple of years back and I was completely disoriented, I couldn't even imagine being in a big running firefight with them on. I only tried it for like 10-15 minutes messing around, soldiers have a speciall night time training session(s) with NVG to get them comfortable with them.

Yeah I have seen those new thermal and night vision goggle they make the image looks brighter but not as colorful as these new Dutch goggles.
And why does every one hate good old green?

Now only if someone would model this baby to Operation Flashpoint. I'd love to play around with it