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Seeing Color in the Night

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the less-green-for-more-green dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "In 'Things that show color in the night,' the Boston Globe reports that a company named Tenebraex is helping color blind people to travel. But it's also developing goggles to help soldiers and physicians to see all colors at night, and not only the green color of current night vision systems. These goggles, which should become available this summer, will be sold for about $6,000 to the Army. But as states one of the founders of the company, with monochrome night vision, 'blood is the same color as water.' So these expensive night vision devices might be more targeted to Army physicians than to regular soldiers."

4 of 166 comments (clear)

  1. Depth perception by truthsearch · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Will adding color help with depth perception? It's one of the big issues with current night vision.

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    1. Re:Depth perception by generationcrm · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I was a grunt for a few years a decade ago, I imagine like most things in the military the usless Airforce will get all the new stuff, the Amy will get a little of it, and the Marines will be opening gear package in the Vietnam era. All, joking aside... I don't see a need for color, I do see it for medics. But frankly for your average soldier patroling and or fighting at night, "where's my tarket" is all you need. Keep it simple lik binary... 0 or 1....Target or no target.

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  2. Re:It's that special military pricing by afidel · · Score: 2, Interesting

    During Gulf War I this was exactly the situation with GPS locators. The milspec units were in short supply with a high cost and long lead time, so many soldiers had their family buy them civilian units for their use. The interesting thing is that while the milspec units had a very high theoretical edge in accuracy in practice the civilian units were generally as accurate because the milspec units were older technology that couldn't make full use of the extra information in the military signal whereas the civilian units used nearly every bit of information contained in the unencrypted signal.

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  3. switch, maybe? by PhetusPolice · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I've come to understand that seeing in only one/two color(s) (ie black and white, nightvision, etc) helps see movement a LOT easiar, which is why many predators have black and white vision. If I were a soldier on the field at night, I'd prefer to keep my nightvision on as a default, but I'm sure it would be useful for them to see in colors for a brief moment to determine what it is they are looking at (such as water and blood). But to always see in color at night might actually inhibit a soldier's ability.