Daytime thermal use - 'cheating' ?

[cartier90 0]

The lovely M110 with the TWS is making daytime missions quite easy , particularly as I used to find the biggest challenge of this game was looking through the thick brush to find my target.

Do thermal cams work as well in the day ?, and are they used in real combat in day time ops ?....would seem like a no brainer to use if they did to scan large areas for hidden targets.

[Takko 10]

Yes they do.

[mr burns 131]

Why would somebody not make an advantage of the ability to se enemy earlier, when usually who shoots first is the one wins?

Doesn´t make sense. It´s there, so it gets used.

I´m sure whatever nation invents a tech to have huge floating exclamation marks floating over the enemys heads will use it too!

Remember: If it´s stupid but it works, it isn´t stupid.

[Big Dawg KS 6]

Do thermal cams work as well in the day ?

Why shouldn't they? They don't rely on visible light at all, so the time of day should make no difference.

[Pulverizer 1]

I'm wondering about this as well. If the ambient temperature is 37.0 celcius, then how can the camera differentiate a body temperature of 37.0 celcius from it? Does the game even have such a thing as ambient temperature? (ie, lower background heat on nights, cloudy days, higher when sunny etc)

[cartier90 0]

Big Dawg, I would of thought that daytime heat would obscure things slightly , but come to think of it Police cams sometimes follow perps in the day like this.

[Windexglow 10]

Don't use them if they bother you -- I quit using them after the game became too easy with them.

[Big Dawg KS 6]

Big Dawg, I would of thought that daytime heat would obscure things slightly , but come to think of it Police cams sometimes follow perps in the day like this.

I doubt that has much effect. While the Sun may heat things up (absorbing heat), it's not the same as something that is producing thermal enegery (ex: people, engines, fires).

[Pulverizer 1]

Why should it make any difference where the heat came from? IR radiation is IR radiation. When an object's surface is of certain temperature, the camera cannot possibly know if the energy to heat it came from inside the object, or outside.

Edited July 18, 2010 by Pulverizer

[Infam0us 10]

http://www.morovision.com/how_thermal_imaging_works.htm - Learn young grasshopper :)

[frederf 0]

The answer is that daytime thermal imaging is often not as effective as nighttime thermal imaging but not usually to the point that it's worthless. The odds that the desert and the person you're looking for are so close in temperature so there is not enough contrast is pretty low. The world gets well hotter and well colder than the soldier.

[cartier90 0]

I suppose it is too costly to provide every soldier with a IR sight...could save some lives..

[da12thMonkey 1943]

I'm wondering about this as well. If the ambient temperature is 37.0 celcius, then how can the camera differentiate a body temperature of 37.0 celcius from it? Does the game even have such a thing as ambient temperature? (ie, lower background heat on nights, cloudy days, higher when sunny etc)

It's not really as simple as that.

Thermal imaging cameras detect a combination of active IR emissions (from combustion or respiration), absorption and re-emission of ambient IR radiation and and reflections from the surface of the object (i.e they can't measure your core temperature). The surface skin temperature of a human body is affected by the ambient temperature that the person is exposed to, and will rise and fall similarly to any other object in the environment.

However, the efficiency with which an object absorbs and re-emits ambient IR radiation (a property called emissivity) is different, depending on the material of the surface. People don't have the same emissivity as rocks or foliage so will re-emit ambient IR radiation differently. As a result, it would be difficult to match IR signatures in most cases where a person would be subject to the same external IR sources that were causing the passive IR emission from the environment, particularly when the human body's IR signature has an additional active component.

Most military clothing and personal equipment is treated with infra-red reflective coatings to try and match its emissivity with that of natural materials and reduce the IR signature of the soldier against their background.

However, true thermal camouflaging tends to take the form of either masking the body by covering it with a material that will not absorb and not re-emit IR from the inside, but will reflect the ambient IR radiation from the surrounding environment on the outside (like one of these suits), or saturate the detector with an active IR source that is of equal or greater intensity to the body in IR emission (think aircraft flares).

[jacobj9 10]

yep its not cheating but really its kind of useless

[Simon C 0]

It's brilliant at spotting people hidden in buildings, and stationary targets hidden in stuff like bushes or behind trees that you'd otherwise miss. Best 2 uses of it in the day, in my opinion.

[wld427 1705]

I had always used my PAS-13B and PAS-13c 24 hours a day in Iraq. I wish they had been as clear and easy to use as the ones in game but in reality they are not. Not even the CROWS systems were that clear during the day. During a hot day the sight obviosly blends things together whiting them out. in the end though a well trained gunner can be very very effective using it to differentiate between heat sources and pick moving or slightly different temperature objects out of the background.

[walker 0]

Hi all

The Big Problem with using thermal sites is distinguish friend from foe from civilian.

Was acting as spotter for a sniper using a thermal scope and him using a sniper rifle with a normal mill dot scope, we spent a good ten minutes with me trying to talk the shooter on to a target partialy obscured by a rock.

This the short version of what happened:

Target, 15 degrees.

NOT SEEN

Reference Electricity pole.

Reference Electricity pole Seen

Right of Pole in foreground rocks.

Reference foreground rocks Seen.

Right of Rocks Smaller rocks

Reference smaller rocks seen.

Target Left Side Small Rocks

Target NOT SEEN

Target Left Side Small Rocks, will correct, Shoot

Shot

Splash seen up 10 and Shoot

Shot

Splash NOT SEEN! are you sure that was 10?

yeh

Down 5, Shoot

Shot

Splash seen! are you sure that was 5?

Yeh

OK Down err down 4, Shoot

Target still not seen, shot.

Splash seen! Err about .5 lower, Shoot

Target still not seen, shot.

Think you hit him?

Target still not seen!?

Just a second I will switch to binos. Ohh Weird closer than I thought.

Ahh!

Dagnabit It was a Rabbit!

Kind Regards walker

Edited July 18, 2010 by walker

[sparks50 0]

Walker, you guys are the worst rabbithunters ever.

I booted up the red harvest campaign last night with OA loaded(its more fun now then at the A2 release), and the FLIR in the laser designator was very helpful.

In Chernarus, its hard to spot people at distance without it. The UAV should also benefit from it.

Edited July 18, 2010 by sparks50

[tacticalnuggets 24]

I doubt that has much effect. While the Sun may heat things up (absorbing heat), it's not the same as something that is producing thermal enegery (ex: people, engines, fires).

The sun, and the air temperature being hotter results in a dark spot in your vision for something with a lower temperature than it. thermal is only good in colder environments during the day. So if something is 100f then it gets really hard to spot them. anything in the 90's temperature wise for air would make it VERY difficult to spot them with thermal, even in a grass field. Air emits infrared energy as well.

[CarlGustaffa 4]

IR suffers problems with at least two IR crossover periods per day. Suffers badly in rain. And have cheap counters in form of masking yourself with a blanket. None of these problems exist in A2OA. TI/TWS overpowered? I think it ruins the game, and mission designers should be extremely cautious in making these devices available.

[WhoCares 0]

But sometimes it saves a mission.

Yesterday played some Domination and after finishing a round we (~25-30 players) started over a new game. I played MH6 shuttle at start and after about 30mins we still had not completed the first city and people already started to leave, thinking something about the mission was broken. So I went there to check for myself, and sure as that everything looked clear. Even did some MOUT-like checking of every building, ... Eventually (~15mins later) I decided to go up some hills and do some more looking around. And smart as I was I had a Laser Rangefinder with me, which happens to feature thermal imaging as well (prefered rifle is an M17 EGLM RCO for its two sights, long and short range). After 10mins scanning the area and changing positions I finally found the drug dealer right in the middle of the town under some tree...

By that time we were down to 8 players...

Long story short (and I like to make short stories long :p ), it's good to use all tools at hand to properly scan and clear an area...

And yepp, this game can be a nightmare for the impatient...

[liquidpinky 11]

IR suffers problems with at least two IR crossover periods per day. Suffers badly in rain. And have cheap counters in form of masking yourself with a blanket. None of these problems exist in A2OA. TI/TWS overpowered? I think it ruins the game, and mission designers should be extremely cautious in making these devices available.

Can be a setback too, was playing a One team domination last night and the amount FF kills were incredible. All down to people using the 110 TWS and nailing our team while trying to advance within the enemy held towns.

I prefer the NV version so I could identify my team and I hate the TWS for adjusting your shots as you don't see the dust splashes.

Admittedly I did TK a sniper, as you do. In my defence he was carrying an RPG7 so I assumed he was of the Takistani persuasion.

So FLIR does have it's drawbacks when both sides are going close quarters and you have trigger happy snipers.

[rekrul 7]

In Lebanon we heard about Hezb'allah being found dead in drysuits as they were trying to sneak up to an IDF/DFF position. This was allegedly to avoid Thermal sights (this was in '95/96 I think), any truth to that? (Not the incident but would a drysuit significantly hide your body-heat?)

[Big Dawg KS 6]

In Lebanon we heard about Hezb'allah being found dead in drysuits as they were trying to sneak up to an IDF/DFF position. This was allegedly to avoid Thermal sights (this was in '95/96 I think), any truth to that? (Not the incident but would a drysuit significantly hide your body-heat?)

Not for long I'd imagine. After a while the suit would definitely start to heat up as well.

[rekrul 7]

You sure? Considering that you can use it in ice-cold water without the inside of the suit being affected by it. And water has a lot more mass than air and transports temperature better (e.g. put your hand in 80C water or a 250C oven).