It seems that many here in their comments reject the industry standards for thermal detection and positive identification that have been in place for decades and developed methodically and scientifically by the professionals in the industry?

The Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate (NVESD) dates back to 1954 with the founding of the Research and Photometric Section of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Engineering Research laboratories,  they developed these industry standards for thermal and NVOs.

Any industry professional that says these standards for resolution, detection, identification, etc are irrelevant is working the in the wrong industry.

Since the posters in this thread reject the Johnson Criteria, apparently they also would reject the same industry standards for GenI, GenII, and GenIII NVOs and would not know how to compare or repair one or the other based on the industry standards for resolution, lines per mm, etc.

At least their are other industry professionals that do respect and honor these basic principles to do quality business with...

I was not jumping around and only raised my arms a few times. Never claimed it was detection or PID of any type. I just posted what I videoed because I was curious about it. I'll let all of the armchair intellectuals argue over it

If you read my post again where you quoted it, I specifically stated ANY industry professional that rejects these standards similar to what norbs79 and others have stated above.

The fact is that without the industry standards promulgated by NVSED and with the help of DARPRA there would be no thermal/NV industry for us consumers to begin with.

I dunno from Positive ID's, Detection Ranges and what-not. But that thar video was friggin hilarious!
Couldn't resist leaving an irrelevant comment on the Tube. d;^)   Jake..

Instead of targeting everything I said or did not say about this, that, and the other throughout this entire thread and ignoring all the other irrelevant posts and not taking them to task about what they said or did not say, now you want to take me to task about what you think I might have implied?


Good luck with that.

It was funny. I laughed as well !

At any rate it was hilarious ! I guess the fact you sped the video up makes it seem you were hopping around. Was pretty funny !

Who would have thought that this epic night vision battle would form over a $2000 thermal?  

It sort of entertaining, cause I got no skin in the game, but the shots that I see taken at people is kinda sad.
Skypup between this thread and the Flir thread I have been pretty dis appointed in your behavior.

In the voice of Rodney King "Cant we all just get along?"  

lol, thats pretty funny!

After reading every post in this thread this is what comes to mind: FIGHT!!!!!!

Meh, Skypup is VERY knowledgeable and has more thermal gear than I could ever have. I have always found him to give honest assessment or the capability of his gear. He is honest and sometimes brutally honest. I kind of like that.

I have met him in person and find him to be a very upstanding person who is an expert in thermal. Does he like FLIR ? He sure does and doesn't hide it ! Kind of like that too. He has passion for the gear he uses regularly.  

Skypup does not need my help in any kind of defense. He is very capable of defending himself. I think some of the criticism is pretty unfair though. I found him to be a pretty straight shooter in this thread and others. He doesn't coddle folks and I guess that upsets some.

Haha, in the prima Donna popularity contest I certainly am a proud loser and proud to be called out by you once again as it adds so much drama to otherwise boring technical discussions!

I've seen another guy do a similar demonstration. Not sure what "device".
But way closer range and it was in "White Spot Hot/Black Not" mode.  



"Epic" and "awesome" are 2 really over-used words anymore that have lost their original clout because of that.
Concerning this thread, I dunno. Sounds much like my old benchrest/varminting shootin buddies sittin around aggravatin each other over ballistics or any other relative-but-trivial subjects. All that's missin is a campfire and some "adult beverages". And like this, the slurred conversations seemed to waver into semi-tedious minutiae & hilarity as it went on.
Welcome to the "Ides of Summer". d;^)  Jake..

It's not about being popular. I used to think you were pretty fair in descriptions even tho your bias toward FLIR was known but everyone has their preferences. I'm a Ford guy myself.
And I can enjoy a spirited friendly debate. What I was speaking to was what I consider mean behavior and some illogical as well as redundundant posts.
You can disagree with UNV all you want but I think you crossed the line past friendly disagreement. You stepped into attack mode and that's just wrong.
I am glad that my lowly opinion makes you proud tho. I didn't realize I was that important in your world.

I try really hard to be fair, even, and neutral. I've spent many thousands of dollars at both TNVC, AND UNV, and have referred customers to both organizations, I think it would be hard to call me biased toward anyone.

As a NV entheusiast I am sad that such a small community has to include all this fighting.

And now I think aim gonna have to get one of these $2000 thermals. Hahahahaha

Back to your regularly scheduled program. Think everyone had a say and we can agree to disagree. Is what makes this forum great. Would be boring if we all agreed. Going fishing tonight with my PVS-7 and my 500 to 300 and sometimes even 200 yard detecting thermal scope. I use it to see shit in the dark so I don't run into it. Works great !

Intensifier based night vision has problems at times on the water due to all the reflection off of it. Then I switch to thermal which has much more limited range but is not affected by the glare off the water.

Cool, now that FLIR bought out Armasight I won't be biased for them since I do not own or use any of Aramasights products myself, just like I do not own any ATN products either. I realize what an epic fail it is for me not to own any of their products, but if I ever find any need I can always purchase one!

And with IRD being bought out by Truijicon, I can still be biased towards them too since I got a lot of my FLIR & IRD thermal kits from them.

Life is good.

At least they did not buy ATN. I would take issue with that. Have no beef with Armasight mostly.

ATN took a beating when Armasight broke off out of them and then another big hit when their Thor Thermal engineer left and started IRD, leaving their Thor project wallowing, pretty much left Satchel in the dust.

LOL, this coming from a guy whose most insightful and most common posts are about  "Fake pixels"

PS, I don't disagree with your post, just how you've managed to represent yourself in this thread.

No worries, the fake pixels are also covered in the Johnson Criteria!


Besides, if you enjoy the fake pixels on low end thermal gear, you'll really be happy at 2X magnification when you can enjoy twice as many of them, and even happier at 4X knowing they multiply for free.

Look's like they're getting back on track ...


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Did Satchmo call you and ask you to post this ? LMAO ! I like you but we don't agree on the whole ATN thing. ATN puts out gear and then offers "fixes" for inadequate crap. Stuff they should have fixed before the product was released. ATN is predictable and I like that. It gives me endless entertainment with Satchmo !

And then to top all of that off, INTEL purchases FLIRs image processing partner for half a billion to take over the image processing hardware and software for the new FLIR Boson thermal cores being released next month.

Good luck with the koolaid. My experience with ATN has been much less. I just hope it all works out.

Tens of millions of gamers won't even try to play the latest games on Intel's graphics chips because they are so far behind the technology curve in image processing.

Fortunately they don't play any games at all, tens of millions of gamers can waste all the time of their lives for as long as they want to while thermal image processing takes a quantum leap forward

But won't that mean even more fake pixels?

Also, for those people who after wading through this thread are still bothering to read it and actually care about what the Johnson Criteria is, these following links will help.

Historic overview

Another review

The company is the one that provides the image processing on the new ATN HD thermals, so yes there must be lots of fake pixels!

These are old reports but still a good read, the newer updated ones directly from NVESD are way better.

 
Skypup, you are messing with everyone. You, more than anyone else here, know every single pixel in a thermal image is fake - Without the processing algorythm's, there would be no thermal sensors. We'd just see noise. Every pixel in a thermal image is fake, but there are separate elements of the focal plane array.


Calling just a few pixels fake? That was funny - :) Still, I waited for someone to mention that none of them are real to begin with, but no one did.


Focal plane arrays aren't like normal sensors.


Anyway, Intel should be able to do some amazing stuff with the next generation of thermals then - :)


David.

Sweet, why not post them instead of talking about them

I think most people got the joke, it was just a really tired one imo.

Haha, there are not many bright bulbs on this site that know some have more fake pixels than others!

I read about as much of the first link as I could stand. Not being a scientist and all once against proves difficult reading for me.

Having said that, I can clearly understand why this is so important that the Military needs to have these standards, same for any other agency who utilizes high value surveillance.


For me, I'm neither. I'm just an armchair enthusiast who loves shooting vermin at night. If I can catch a glimps of something farther away than what the model predicts as seen in the video, even better. Who wouldn't want to know that it may be possible to make a "discovery" of something before reaching the criteria defined as detection?

 
http://prod.sandia.gov/techlib/access-control.cgi/2015/156368.pdf - As already posted on page 3 of the thread - :)


This one's not from the NVESD, but still quite interesting.

Yeah I guess we both posted that. I'm curious about the newer NVESD stuff SkyPup mentioned.

I totally get you. Most folks don't care about this stuff nor have the background to digest it, that's why I commented that decent representative video is probably of more use to the average guy.

Skypup seems to be referring to quite a few documents and is quite an expert in his field - And Skypup, please forgive me if I'm responding out of order here - just correct me if I'm wrong.


But I think he was primarily referring to the TTP, which is one of the touted replacements for the Johnson criteria.  


http://www.hf.faa.gov/visibility/documents/armytarget.pdf




Also I think he was also referring to the Cycle Criteria for Detection with respect to camouflaged targets.


I don't have a link for that, but you can probably look it up. It would be relevant to pigs in their natural environment also - something else he alluded to earlier in the thread.




Models such as these are very useful for simulation activities... If you can predict accurately the performance of different equipment, you can use that information tactically.




A lot of the models make prediction of detection probabilities also. Both models originated within the NVESD.




I don't know if there were others he was specifically referring to, but those two were my assumptions from his post - I may be wrong though. When it comes to human vision systems, I'm actually out of my league next to Skypup.




David.




 

 
Videos are good, but even if accurate and without embellishment, can still be misleading. I guess that's why realistic figures to describe performance are so critical. Some people will struggle with basic stuff like focus that someone like Rich wouldn't even think twice about. That's why I'd compare his videos to watching a professional doing a task on youtube. They make it look so simple, yet somehow, my paint still goes everywhere and my cakes look like they were made by a 3yo kid.


They way I'd describe this thread at the end of the discussion? A HD19A is reliable for detection out to 300 yds as Vic said, but a skilled operator clearly might detect them out as far as 500 yds under the right conditions. I wouldn't recommend the HD19A to anyone for work outside of the reliable range, but I think this thread has shown that it's worth them knowing that sometimes, if you're not in a hurry and know roughly where you're expecting to find a target, you can get better results.


David.

Yeah that's one of them David, since the Johnson Criteria is very optimistic and cannot account for changing atmospheric conditions, NATO and others have adapted new adaptations for determing visible, IR, and mid-wave thermal camera performance which are more conservative than previous assessments.

Cherry picked edited Thermal videos on You-Tube and other internet media are great marketing tools for sales but they sux for any true performance determinations.

Originally Posted By cj7hawk

They way I'd describe this thread at the end of the discussion? A HD19A is reliable for detection out to 300 yds as Vic said, but a skilled operator clearly might detect them out as far as 500 yds under the right conditions. I wouldn't recommend the HD19A to anyone for work outside of the reliable range, but I think this thread has shown that it's worth them knowing that sometimes, if you're not in a hurry and know roughly where you're expecting to find a target, you can get better results.





David.
Can you please make a table that will show how far away away these various measurements can be "detected" with this sensor?

For example,


10" = 150 yards

15" = 200 yards

20" ..... etc (I just made those numbers up)


The beauty of hog hunting is that they generally don't stand still for very long and even a brand new person using this scanner for the first time is likely to spot hogs moving around displaying their whole bodies at times and the narrowest part of their bodies at other times. I think it would be useful to know how far away we should be able to reliably detect something based on its size.


Maybe this chart can list diameter measurements in 5" increments beginning at 5 or 10" and increase all the way to about 45" which may be about as "long" as a really large hog or deer is when viewed broadside.


Thanks.

Yeah, please add a Snellen eye chart too so the user can assess their own visual acuity of their cornea, lens, aqueous humor, and retinal gangalion cells at these distances before attempting to ID the tiny distant thermal heat signatures..

Another very important anatomical and physiological fact that is of paramount importance in viewing thermal camera images that has not been mentioned here is that the human retina contains two types of photoreceptors, rods and cones.

The rods are more numerous, some 120 million, and are more sensitive than the cones. However, they are not sensitive to color.

The 6 to 7 million cones provide the eye's color sensitivity and they are much more concentrated in the central yellow spot known as the macula.

In the center of that region is the " fovea centralis ", a 0.3 mm diameter rod-free area with very thin, densely packed cones.

This is specifically the most critical area of the eye for human sight.


Thermal microbolometer thermal resistors are converted into shades of gray anywhere from 2 to the 8th power to 2 to the 20th power, depending on how powerful the image processing transistors are, this is tens of thousands of times and sometimes tens of millions of times what the human rods are able to detect and discern. Some have software to covert the shades of gray into colors for temperature differentials, while others only output gray.

Human rods are only able at the very best to discern about 200 shades of gray and these rods are not located in the central macula.

Human Electroretinography is used to measure the response of the cones and the rods in the retinal photoreceptor cells for any abnormalities in these cells in regards to both color and gray scale responses.

Human ERGs plot the response of these cells to visible light wavelengths, black and white produces much less response than color because the human retina can only detect at the very best about 200 shades of gray from white to black, while it can easily detect millions and millions of visible colors.


One of the very funny statements I often read here on this site is "I never use color palettes in my thermal device, colors are just for shits and giggles."

LOL, these people have little to no understanding of what they are talking about!

In reality, when looking to detect and discern tiny heat signatures far far away like Rich commonly does, the right color pallet will assist tremendously in detection simply because you can see millions and millions of colors and differentiate them right in the central most focused portion of your retina, whilst you can only detect and differentiate 200 shades of gray scale at best in the least most resolvable portions of your retina.

Basic science of the human eye plays a very important part in how thermal images are seen and interpolated by the brain through the neural ophthalmic channels even if you do not know anything about it.

Whenever an NV/Thermal industry professional makes recommendations as to range, determination, and identification of specific devices based on their on their own subjective experiences in the field, they should first take into account the visual acuity of their prospective customer.

According to the American Association of Ophthalomology, approximately 75% of adults use some sort of vision correction. About 64% of them wear eyeglasses, and about 11% wear contact lenses, either exclusively, or with glasses. As photons pass through lenses on their way to the retina, their transmittance is decreased.

Another 10% suffer from either corneal or lenticular astigismatism making vision focus problematic, particularly at night. Others have genetic rod abnormalities affecting their night vision in a negative manner.

Over 40% of adults over the age of 40 have cataracts.

Visual acuity decreases significantly over age 35 as the crystalline lenticular proteins of the lens denature with age and form cataracts.

10% of all males have sex-linked recessive X-chromosome linked red geen color blindness, with another couple of percent suffering from other inherited forms of Achromatasia.


Take home message for novices is that what you think you are seeing, is not what someone else thinks are are seeing.

I didn't ask you anything.

But since were talking, how far down on that chart can you read at your eye doctors office under control to settings?


I have 20/10 corrected vision.