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Seeing Color in the Night

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Mon Mar 26, 2007 01:17 PM
from the less-green-for-more-green dept.
Technology Hardware
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."
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  • press release disguised as news (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    but we knew that from reading who the submitter is

    anyway here is the product page from Tenebraex
    http://camouflage.com/colornightvision.php [camouflage.com]

  • Depth perception (Score:3, Interesting)

    by truthsearch (249536) on Monday March 26 2007, @01:26PM (#18490837) Homepage Journal
    Will adding color help with depth perception? It's one of the big issues with current night vision.

    • Re:Depth perception (Score:5, Informative)

      by AKAImBatman (238306) * <akaimbatman.gmail@com> on Monday March 26 2007, @01:33PM (#18490927) Homepage Journal
      I doubt it. It will help some if the colors are vibrant enough for the human eye to read more "cues" than were available with green-vision, but otherwise it still comes back to the matter of binocular vision. You need two sensors set apart from one another at the approximate distance of your eyes in order to replicate that ability. Otherwise, it's like strapping a television screen to your face and a camera to your head, and walking down the street. You can do it, but it's disorienting.

      • Re:Depth perception (Score:5, Informative)

        by MindStalker (22827) <.jlarsen. .at. .fsu.edu.> on Monday March 26 2007, @02:25PM (#18491601) Journal
        The real problem is one of magnification. Most night googles provide some amount of magnification (ie zoom) providing depth perception and zoom requires heavy math on the part of the googles to separate the images just the right amount to provide a sense of depth that would be faulty if you simply zoomed. Its possible but computationally heavy.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by theshowmecanuck (703852)

        If you notice, many night vision goggles have one lens for capturing the 'input' (actually the intensifier) which is split and fed to the two lenses for your eyes. So, yes, in many cases they are getting the same image for both eyes. i.e. it is not true binocular vision.

      • Re:Depth perception (Score:5, Insightful)

        by gravesb (967413) on Monday March 26 2007, @02:31PM (#18491667) Homepage
        Actually, as an infantry officer, I prefer the monocular. If you get whited-out, you still have one good eye. It takes a bit to get used to, but once you are used to it, the monocular is an excellent system.
      • "Yes, not everyone gets the cool binocular headsets, but that's a matter of the Army being too cheap-ass to properly equip troops, not a technical problem. It's the same reason the Army doesn't bother giving troops body armor, armoring vehicles, or providing adequate medical care."

        Do you think the military budget is bottomless? The 80/20 rule applies to soldiers as much as it does to anything else; if very marginal increases in real utility double the cost of something it is frequently foolish to waste fin
        • You're right: when the nation is busy spending $1 trillion it doesn't have (i.e., going into debt) on a war that has no justification, it's hard to afford all the extra niceties like body armor, vehicle armor, and medical care (I'm not going to bother Googling for the references for you; they've been all over the news for several years now).

          If you're going to ask a soldier to risk his life for a purely political goal, the least you can do is provide him with the very best equipment and medical care money ca

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by cp.tar (871488)

            Now, sorry for being blunt (i.e. trolling), but military equipment is expensive.
            Suckers who volunteer to fight in wars are a dime a dozen.

            I mean, nobody pays people to reproduce, but they do it anyway, eh? The more you kill, the more will spawn.

            (Why, yes, I am a mizanthrope.)

      • "that's a matter of the Army being too cheap-ass to properly equip troops, not a technical problem. It's the same reason the Army doesn't bother giving troops body armor, armoring vehicles, or providing adequate medical care"

        You can't actually believe what you're saying, can you?

        The US armed forces are the most highly equipped fighting forces in the history of the world. I mean, for chrissake, the crux of your argument is that the army is "cheap ass" because it only supplies monocular NIGHT VISION GOGGLES to its GIs. This is about as relevant as complaining that the Army is cheap because they only hand out Core-Solo notebooks to users instead of Core-Duo notebooks.

        Do we have a perfect military? Of course not. But that'

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Grishnakh (216268)
          I'm "attacking" the Army by complaining how it doesn't adequately supply troops? Maybe I'm attacking the top brass that controls those things, but I don't think I'm attacking the Army as a whole, certainly not the soldiers who have to put up with doing battle without any armor, or having to accept substandard medical care.

          Ultimately, the blame for these things lies at the very top.

          And yes, I do bitch about my tax money being spent on the military: I can think of many better things to spend $1 TRILLION on t

          • And yes, I do bitch about my tax money being spent on the military: I can think of many better things to spend $1 TRILLION on than an unjustified war.

            I'm sure you're pretty smart in other areas, but that's an ignorant statement.
            Instead of forking over tax money & being worried about what it gets spent on, then bitching about your own mistake, why don't you donate that money to causes you're happy with, or better yet start your own cause, then in either scenario, write it off on your taxes at the end

  • If I was a soldier on recon or something, I'm pretty sure I'd like the ability to tell whether that liquid on the ground was water or blood.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by zcubed (916242)
      Paris Hilton should get one and then we wouldn't have to look at the green vids anymore.
    • Distinguishing and following blood trails would be easier. Tracking people is quite like tracking animals, and while it sounds gory, this matters.

      While it doesn't get much mention nowadays (being very un-PC), blood trails were followed by both sides when tracking each other in Viet Nam.
    • "Bring me my red shirt!"

  • More than just combat issues, here... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ScentCone (795499) on Monday March 26 2007, @01:32PM (#18490905)
    There are some non-gun-toting people who need to operate in a stealthy or semi-stealthy manner that would make use of this sort of thing. Think of the National Geographic-types that are setting up a pre-dawn shoot and trying to remain less visible, or the guys working on a forward helicopter refueling station who definitely prefer to be harder to see and definitely want to know the difference between stepping in a puddle of water and a puddle of hydraulic fluid.

    • Psshhh (Score:5, Funny)

      by CasperIV (1013029) on Monday March 26 2007, @01:43PM (#18491037)
      The non-gun-toting people are not as interesting. Besides, I do not condone the voyeurism of animals.
      • Hydraulic fluid tends to be clear like water.

        Actually, it's usually tinted for use in different systems so that you can tell which system is leaking. That's why your car's transmisstion fluid is tinted red - so that you can tell right away that you're in Deep Doo-Doo when you have a leak!

        Also, more viscous fluids (like various hydraulic goos) have very different-looking spectral reflections... I mean, they just seem to catch the light (especially colored light) differently than other fluids (dark oil,
  • That statement seems very strange.

    I thought these things were infra red based. That means that fresh blood should be body temperature/bright, while water should be area temperature/dark.

    Sure, it might be the same 'green', but is should be dramatically different, one very dark green, the other a shiny bright green.

    Am I misunderstanding something here? Or did they just use a bad example?

    • I thought these things were infra red based.

      Nope. Green-vision systems work on light-amplification principles. Infrared is a different technology that's more useful in tracking than it is as generic night-vision.
    • normally, i'm sure they're not infrared based. otherwise they wouldnt look like just green-tinted black and white videos, they'd look funky as hell, like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_camera [wikipedia.org]

      there are infrared cameras, but they're not the same as a night-vision [wikipedia.org] camera.

    • Different Technologies (Score:5, Informative)

      by DG (989) on Monday March 26 2007, @01:49PM (#18491115) Homepage Journal
      There are three main technologies used for night vision in military equipment:

      1) Active IR: This is the old-style IR spotlight. This uses a just-below-visible IR spotlight and an IR-sensitive optical device (usually a driving periscope) Despite being IR-based, it is fairly narrowband and so isn't sensitive to heat - it is more like an "invisible spotlight". Not used much anymore.

      2) Image Intensifiers (aka "Starlight"): This is the technology behind "night vision goggles" or NVGs for short. They magnify the available light. They are also slightly sensitive to near-IR, so you can see IR-based LEDs, stobes, glowsticks etc - wearing one, you can see the IR LED flash in a TV remote control. The older Gen 1 goggles used an element for each eye, so you had grainy binocular vision. Newer systems from Gen II to Gen IV give an increasingly sharper and clearer picture, but tend to be monocular, so no depth perception - and I've seen some pretty funny things happen because of it. These don't see heat either.

      3) Thermal Imagers (aka TI): These are heat-sensitive, and can see through most smokes. These are much larger units, and are usually used as part of vehicle weapon system sights or dedicated surveillance equipment (NOD-IR) Most modern tanks have them, LAV-25s and Bradleys have them, and there are manpack versions to use in an OP - but you won't be bolting these to your helmet anytime soon.

      Up close, these can see through clothing. Don't ask how I know this. ;)

      DG
      • Just want to comment on your point 2) - I have a couple of video cameras without IR filters, and they can see the IR remotes light up, too. For those who are trying to see through people's clothing, this is your test in the store :) (Then all you need is an IR illuminator like the one from BG Micro.)
      • Thermal Imagers (aka TI): These are heat-sensitive, and can see through most smokes. [...] Up close, these can see through clothing. Don't ask how I know this. ;)

        Neat ! Oh and, BTW, how did you happen to know this ?

      • There's one other way to do it, and it is always full-spectrum:

        Really freakin' huge diameter binoculars(/telescopes) with unity magnification. Refractive or Reflective optics as per choice (though reflective would probably be lighter.)

        But it's really bulky, especially if it needs to work with starlight.

        I'm actually surprised no one has made matched-color wheel image intensifier before. It's a fairly obvious modification to existing technology, especially to anyone that's studied image intensifiers used in
    • Heat radiation is another wavelength than near-infrared. It's the same sort of infrared that's used in your remote, it doesn't feel warm either. Simply put it is just "redder than red", beyond the spectrum we can see. A nice experiment is to look at a glass of red wine with a night vision camera: it too will be clear as water. since red wine lets red light through, and your camera sees red light, it's transparent.
  • Tenebraex says that blood is the same color as water, hmmm?

    I'll pass, kthx.

  • The Night Is the Hunter (Score:3, Funny)

    by Doc Ruby (173196) on Monday March 26 2007, @01:40PM (#18490997) Homepage Journal
    How about some of these color nightvision goggles fitted with the bat ears [google.com] that allow human echolocation?

    Those kinds of sense boosters could make night, with less distractions away from the target, the most effective time to purse targets.

  • For the record... (Score:5, Informative)

    by coolmoose25 (1057210) on Monday March 26 2007, @01:41PM (#18491011)
    I have color blindness, but I can still see colors. Most color blind people can see colors, they simply have trouble distinguishing one color from the other, particularly when they are close... For instance, I have no trouble telling the difference between a red light and a green light, and I have no trouble distinguishing the colors on a weather map. But ask me to identify a particular color as pink or purple, and I can see the color as either or both at the same time. That's why I can't see the damn number on the test page! Most color blind people do not see in Monochrome, as it would seem that most of the non-color-blind world tends to believe. For more info, check out the wikipedia entry... [wikipedia.org]
    • What you (and I) have is termed, at least by my optician, as colour deficiency. Colour blindness is indeed (apparently and technically) a complete absence of colour-sensing ability. For the record, I also find it interesting that I have better colour vision if the patch of colour is larger. I am useless, for example, at reading resistor colour codes.

  • So what is it doing, exactly? (Score:3, Informative)

    by The-Bus (138060) on Monday March 26 2007, @01:46PM (#18491073) Homepage
    I wonder how this device works. There's no information about it at Tenebraex's website [tenebraex.com], so it doesn't say. I know that in basic biology you learn that eyes are made up of rods and cones. Rods distinguish light and dark and cones distinguish color. Cones don't work very well in the dark. Rods do. So we can't "see" color as well in the dark. It's interesting that this is both a biological and a technological problem.
    • I wonder how this device works. You were probably looking for more than this, but...


      From the article:

      The technology, called ColorPath, combines a standard scope with a pair of rotating filters that vary the intensity of light coming from different colored objects. The brain interprets these variations as differences in color, enabling the viewer to recognize red and blue objects obscured by the green glow of today's night scopes.

      • If they are using rotating color filters (or variations on the idea) then this isn't really new technology. One of the competing color TV standards used this technology. NASA uses similar technology to get color from a monochromatic camera. Not to mention the Russian photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii who used the color filter method to produce color pictures for the czar.

        I thought that the green color was chosen because the eye was most sensitive to it.

  • It's that special military pricing (Score:5, Funny)

    by Quiet_Desperation (858215) on Monday March 26 2007, @01:49PM (#18491129)

    These goggles, which should become available this summer, will be sold for about $6,000 to the Army.

    And sold to consumers at Best Buy for $49.99 ($45.99 at Amazon).

    • You forgot to mention that at Best Buy, you'll be bullied by the spiky-haired-with-facial-piercings saleskid into getting a service plan for $199.99. And when you take it back because it's defective, they'll blame it on you and refuse to exchange it.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by afidel (530433)
      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 ci
  • I mean, come on folks, this technology has been around for decades: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thum b/1/14/High_power_torch.jpg/250px-High_power_torch .jpg [wikimedia.org]

  • Military Pricing (Score:2, Redundant)

    by Itninja (937614)

    ....will be sold for about $6,000 to the Army.
    So the actual retail value would be what? About $50 each?

  • switch, maybe? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by PhetusPolice (934823)
    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.

  • Colors in the night... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Brad1138 (590148) * <brad1138@yahoo.com> on Monday March 26 2007, @03:43PM (#18492709)
    This reminds me of a question my Grandfather posed to me when I was young (30+ yrs ago). When the lights are out, can you not see colors (objects) because it is dark or because they don't have any color w/o light shining on them, a bit like "does a tree falling make noise if no one is there to hear it". I haven't thought of this in a while, I am sure there is a scientific answer, I would guess the prior, the characteristics that make an object a certain color are still there when the lights are out.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by FLEB (312391)
          Yes. That would be active infrared, presumably with some sort of IR floodlights.

    • Re:Fuck Roland Piquepaille (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ed Avis (5917) <ed@membled.com> on Monday March 26 2007, @03:16PM (#18492271) Homepage
      No. Ronald Piquepaille has mended his ways. The story links straight to the relevant article and not to his blog. The last few stories from him have done the same. It's time to declare victory and move on to some other gripe.

      • Re:Fuck Roland Piquepaille (Score:5, Informative)

        by siglercm (6059) on Monday March 26 2007, @05:42PM (#18494435) Journal
        Oblig: Please tag as 'ohnoitsroland' -- thank you.

        Ronald Piquepaille has mended his ways. The story links straight to the relevant article and not to his blog.
        Are you sure? I haven't been checking the Firehose lately. When I did last week, Roland was submitting articles with self-referring blog links.

        You see, it's the Slashdot editors we should be thanking, not Roland in the least. They have (at least twice recently) redacted his go-back-to-my-blog-and-run-up-my-hits self linkage. Thank you, editors!
    • Materials reflect different amounts of specific wavelengths of light. If you want to see how much green a material reflects, you pretty much have to shine some green light on it. You might be able to get a partial mapping by using a database of materials with their IR and visible spectrum reflections, but there's no simply mapping that can be done.

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