Vehicle Optics - Ways to improve them?

[instagoat 133]

Something I have recently thought about is combat optics, and how they are simulated in the game. Modern vehicles obviously have very advanced systems, but even those have limitations. In the game, however, no matter which optic you use, it is always crystal clear and no contrast or resolution losses.

 

Now I am pondering if it is at all possible to make vehicle optics behave more like actual optics. I know there are visual filters that can be applied, but I don't know how well these work and if they can do what I was thinking about.

 

I will give some examples.

 

1: Low colour contrast in daylight and NV-IR channels. Especially in optics involving mirror surfaces, this should be a problem. You can also have effects like chromatic (purple fringing) aberration or curved focal plane issues (especially in older optical systems) where the edges of the picture are out of focus.

 

2: Low sensor resolutions especially in IR and thermal optics. As an example, typical sensor sizes in current generation thermal optics seems to be around 640x480 to 800x600 pixels. As such, at very long range they can be used for observation, but not for accurate shooting because the actual target size is smaller than the pixel resolution. By 2035 these systems will still have the physically inherent problems and limitations of thermal systems.

 

3: Bloom and flash oversaturation. Especially in lower quality systems this can be a problem. Modern thermals seem to have this well under control, though.

 

(Video of an Apache Guncam during the Iraq war) This video shows the limitations pretty well, comparatively low resolution combined with high zoom levels, bloom (weapons that have recently been fired especially) as well as sight vibration and associated disturbance of the picture (3:30, hellfire is fired) when a weapon is being released from the aircraft. Tank gunsights will behave much in the same way. We already have the vibration, not the blur.

 

The reason I am asking about this is that because of the unrealistically clear picture in all thermal systems, they make the game too easy. It is extremely easy to positively identify your target, at almost any distance. With lower sensor resolution (ie, blurry picture at high zoom levels) and other thermal limitations, it would be easier to use these sensors also in player vs player adversarials because they do not turn into ultimate wallhacks anymore.

 

Optical systems with some limitations would also help, however, this is difficult to simulate with the new 3D scopes which is why I am focusing on vehicle mounted optics here.

 

Any thoughts on this? I would especially love to hear from people who have themselves experience with building vehicles and configuring optics in Arma.

[da12thMonkey 1943]

The reason I am asking about this is that because of the unrealistically clear picture in all thermal systems, they make the game too easy. It is extremely easy to positively identify your target, at almost any distance. With lower sensor resolution (ie, blurry picture at high zoom levels)

 

HD thermal imaging (2 Megapixel microbolometers with 1080p display) is already becoming the norm for military vehicle thermal imaging systems, so I wouldn't worry about resolution for Arma 3's vehicle optics.

 

This is a crop (690x584 instead of the full 1280x1024) from the Thales Catherine MP (MegaPixel) camera of the type used on a number of British military reconnaissance vehicles (Praetorian, Scimitar 2, Scout SV, probably Challenger 2 CLIP in future):

Wescam cameras with the same resolution or better are generally being applied across the board to aircraft.

 

Pretty clear, no? If anything, Arma 3's TI is worse because of the crap image contrast we get between background objects.

 

Image resolution only degrades at higher magnifications on TI cameras if they use digital zoom modes rather than the optical zoom modes.

 

In the UK, the older legacy TI systems that are yet to be upgraded are usually ~754x576 resolution, but the real drop in quality comes when you apply TI to hand-held systems. Our latest thermal imaging weapon sight is only ~ 640x480 resolution. Technology is improving though and IIRC companies like FLIR are starting to market affordable hand-held HD thermal imaging systems.

 

As I said before, the issue with Arma 3's thermals is that there's almost no contrast difference in the background clutter so targets like men and vehicles stick out like a sore thumb against a sea of continuous dark grey.

[martin_lee 33]

Thermal imaging in general have a low resolution due to longer wavelength of infrared light. Given the same aperature size, thermal imaging will have a worse resolution compared to visible camera. There are ways to improve resolution, like using synthetic aperature, and in fact the above post showed that it can be done (though I don't know what they used in the above).  They would always cost quite a bit more from a standard thermal imaging, so as to how wide-spread such system would become, it is all up to speculations, really.

 

In this regard, though, the system would usually be big and heavy, so I think they would have to be vehicle mounted. Portable thermal imaging like riflescope and rangefinder, however, should probably have a much lower resolution.

 

When it comes to visible optics, though, I think the problems you mentioned probably would not apply. I mean, think about those high-end commercially-available cameras we have today, there is almost no aberations at all. I remember watching a video about the new F-16 sniper pod. I think they can identify vehicles miles away with it (though it is in grayscale, not colour image.). So I would say that visible optics (at least vehicle mounted ones) are very mature even now.

 

Night vision can be another story, though. Gen 1 have very noticible distortion around the edges. But I think from Gen 2 onwards it is greatly improved. Gen 3 Night vision we have now have very little distortions, and very good contrast. They still would suffer from bloom, though. So I think that's the reason why there exist infra red tracer.

[x3kj 1247]

The absolutely biggest issue for thermal is

• the HDR graphics effect: the thermal texture that units have almost completely dissappears in some situations and is replaced by the solid flat HOT color. So any "concealment" the target may have through it's texture is gone if you look at it in a certain way. In the following video you can see what i mean. Particulary when i zoom out at 0:40 you can see how the not-really-hot tracked APC goes to complete Hot and loses all features it had. The helicopter never showed any to begin with... I think it would be better if HDR was flat out disabled for TI.

• too high contrast between background and units: The contrast between background and units is way too high in daylight and i'd also say at night. Maybe the current situations fits cold winter, (i only used TI in winter myself) but since the altis environment is summer in a hot climate it's not fitting. Currently you can spot everything kilometers away, because it's solid extreme HOT against an almost completely cool background. You can barely see the background actually, trying to navigate/ see any terrain features with TI activated is almost impossible sometimes. This is not the case in reality, otherwise tank drivers wouldn't partially have TI for driving at night now, instead of nightvision. Its also apparent if you look at any FLIR footage...

The range and resolution are not really the problem i feel, those things would sort them self out very easily when the above mentioned things are adressed. You wouldn't be able to just 360° in 10 seconds and know every living/moving thing in your object viewrange when this is adressed.

 

Night vision can be another story, though. Gen 1 have very noticible distortion around the edges. But I think from Gen 2 onwards it is greatly improved. Gen 3 Night vision we have now have very little distortions, and very good contrast. They still would suffer from bloom, though. So I think that's the reason why there exist infra red tracer.

The biggest thing with Nightvision ingame vs. reality is the contrast and the grizzling noise of the image, and also focus range. I used Gen2 or Gen2+ (dont remember what the german standard NVG is) and had to adjust focal range often, especially when constantly looking at objects of varying distance. Also at very low light leve ls the noise would be very extreme. I went on patrol in the wood in a moonless night and overcast night and you couldn't  see more then 2m. With the inbuilt IR flashlight maybe 5m. Aything out of that range was not distinguishable at all, the noise made any recognition of objects impossible, even if you stayed still. (you couldn't distinguish if something moved 20m away from you either, or if it was just the noise playing mind tricks with you).

In normal light conditions there is not much of that noise. I would assume that earlier gen's had a lot more of it, and the light levels had to be alot higher to see the same things.

 

It's a shame that we can't have something like this to limit the effective range of NV to simulate older, less effective Gen's

 

 

TL:DR - current TI is kinda similar to a wallhack in counterstrike in the olden days -  they'd have the cheater see any enemy instantly, but they would run against every a wall because it was not possible to distinguish it...

If you want to have any fun in competitive matches in multiplayer, you are better off not using TI, like Shacktac does for example.

[roberthammer 582]

TI maps in A3 have some kind range limit , which is a shame - they should always show the TI map at all ranges and not only in close range/zoomed view

 

I get the feeling the TI maps worked better in A2 OA , but not really sure

 

Also that auto-contrast of the TI doesn't help it , makes it worse > http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=2899

 

NV isn't good either - it's like simple green overlay , it needs some special shader to simulate the actual NV

[instagoat 133]

From what I've read here and some other things I found, it seems now that the biggest problem is that ground temperature is not modelled adequately. For example, during the summer it can reach 40+ degrees in greece in the afternoon, so the ground temperature would be hotter than average human skin temperature.

 

The dynamic aperture automation is also a problem, but I'm not sure what's bigger, the apparently unmodelled ground and object temperature or the aperture problems.

 

One also has to remember that there are systems in use even now that have abysmal picture quality (for example, see the iraqi Mi-35 gun camera footage pieces). Do modellers have the ability to change the picture quality in these optical systems at all? VBS-2 has a feature that allows to blur thermals and other devices according to their spec, see here:

 

Note the blurry outlines of the objects and persons. In A2 and A3, you could make out miniscule details on the uniform, there, not so much. At least the ability to introduce poor quality thermals would be helpful, because then you could still use them in MP without them becoming unbeatable wallhacks.

[DancZer 65]

Some vehicles weapon's are visible on thermal view which causes issues. The weapon barrel heat up and dynamic aperture make the whole view into one gray view with white shining weapon barrel. :)