Someone raised an issue in another thread and it inspired me to launch this thread as a dumping ground for general questions regarding terminology and standards so we don't need to clutter the other threads with repetitive questions.

OK I'll bite.  What's a better way to describe all the choices out there today?  Gen I, II, III really doesn't cut it any more.  The line is seriously blurred between gen II+ and gen III low-end mil-spec.  Then you have guys putting different tubes in different housings.  There are -7's out there now with gen III quality, and there are -14's out there with gen II/II+ tubes.  Then you have US stuff vs Euro.

Something like a letter or number scale to describe actual overall performance, not model or tube numbers.  I realize on the upper end, that's moving target, but for what we're dealing with, on our level, you can try and describe all the kit bashing going on out there.

Specifically, you can describe a middle ground, where you have gen II/II+ on one end, and gen III green (auto-gated "Pinnacle") on the other.  So regardless of dash number or gen, you could get an idea of exactly what you're dealing with.  

We seem to be seeing this Ford/Chevy thing going on between L3 and Photonis tubes.  It would be nice if someone rated/classified them head-to-head.  

Also we seem to be in a fork at the road, with devices marketed to the hunting market, versus those that are for self defense.  So the end use might also be used to describe the quality.  For instance, high grade hunting tube might not be the same as a high end defense tube.  So basically the hunting market could end at gen III green, with the defense market going into gen III WP and beyond.

Don't know if that's a pipe dream or if someone could come up with an honest rating system.  Or at least say this one is the Camaro, and this one is the Mustang, so you know there are differences but they're in the same basic category.

SNR and Res... thats the best way to compare Imo.

Is there a sweet spot in all this?  Can the numbers work together to give you a certain performance?  Like will a higher SNR cancel out a lower LP, or vice versa.  Or do you generally try and get both numbers as high as possible?

I was just trying to keep it simple. Most of this stuff has been discussed here for nearly 15 years.  

Res = image quality (higher = better)
SNR=roughly equals low light performance. (higher = better)
Ebi=noise/sparklies (you want this one to be low)
halo=how big of a halo you see around street lights or other point light sources (ir lasers too). lower=better

That all being said, most people buying used stuff won't have a data sheet.
Your next best resource is the OMNI chart linked up at the top. It covers MX10160 tubes used by the US under various contracts and time periods
Your other good resource is old factory literature. MX10130's for example didn't always live up to avaiation grade standards back then.

One last caveat is that really old tubes were measured using different SNR criteria (MX9916's MX9964's). So if you see something like 4 or 3.5 for an SNR that seems really shitty, its not, it was just measured at a way lower light level than modern tubes. SNR-4 works out to about 12 by the modern method (and no its more complicated than multiplying by 3 but that will get you in the ballpark).

Again, simply speaking.
Resolution is typically limited by the pore size of the microchanel plate which improved continuously over time
SNR is broadly speaking can be thought of as function of the photo-cathode, but also ion barrier films which gen3 systems have (this is the main reason that straight Photocathode response (PCR) is not always a good indicator of performance, early ion barriers ate 50% or more of the electrons generated by the photocathode).

By decades rules of thumb (very broad)

70's  original Gen2's SNR~12, Res ~low 30's (early pvs-5s)
80's  improved gen2 (SNRs ~15 Res high 30's low 40's) (Advanced PVS-5s) Early gen3 SNR's ~mid to high teens, Res 40's (omni1/2 ish)
90's  Fancy gen2 (SNRs in the mid teens, res gets better into the 50's) OMNI3/4/5 for gen3 systems, SNR's high teens, Res 50s-mid 60's.
00's  Ultra fancy gen2 (SNRs sneak into the 20's, Res in the 60's 70's XR-5 etc) OMNI6/7 SNR's mid to high 20's typical, res 60'/70's (thin film and filmless tech here for gen3)
teens SNR's still in the 20's Res in 60's/70's for gen2, Omni8, SNR's in the high 20's low 30's typical res 60-80's depending on the tube.

Basically modern gen3 stuff is spec wise about 2x-2.5x compared to where the technolgy started at in the 70's.

Functionally, I consider even pvs-5's ok. But I'd much rather have something better, I'd say performance wise on a semi modern system omni4/5 ish era tubes are pretty good, but of course modern tubes will look nicer and have better low light performance. Omni6+ you get a decent boost from the the thin film technology or better yet unfilmed tech, though its use was not exactly universal.

So much for keeping it simple...

Yup... With higher end stuff its pretty hard to tell a difference under normal circumstances. I'd ballpark that people can distinguish a 15-20lp/mm difference fairly easily, but less than that it gets dodgy... SNR differences you'd mainly see when it was really dark.

System resolution and System gain are two of the most important terms, yet are very poorly understood and infrequently used.

Yup, I totally agree but no one actually publishes those specs. And what are you gonna do with a home built system and no test gear.

Uh OK.  I have read those older threads BTW and thanks for re-capping here.  

I see this split within the community, as far as sourcing your NV gear, of those who are selling new kit, and those that are selling, well new kit, but the difference being one stream focuses on the gen III technology, mostly US, and another focuses on "upgrading" older gen II/II+ stuff, frequently sourced from overseas.  So first of all, what is the real performance truth here (hence the need for an independent rating system), and then who do you trust to buy it from.  These are the key issues for me, and I assume many others.

The market has become muddied with these "retro" gen II/II+ (and perhaps even gen III) builds, that perhaps rival some of the mainstream gen III performance (and I only use "gen" here because I currently have no other way to describe it).  Add to that the current availability of foreign tubes coming into the mix, and you have a really sticky wicket here.

The other question is the integrity of the dealer you are dealing with.  Do you go to an established dealer, with the assumption that he is legit, simply because he has a storefront or presence on line, or do you trust the "hobby" guy, who works from his garage, in his spare time, because it's his passion.  No judgement here; I think either one could be legit; that depends on the individual.      

If "we" established some sort of rating system, which defines the device by performance criteria, as "we" see it, rather than what the government has to say about it.  Then a chap could look at all this lovely kit out there and decide which is the best deal for him.  

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I think there is enough expertise on this forum to actually pull this off.  

As a very rough example, let's say you want to define a category, where the MNVD has a SNR of say 24-ish, with a LP of 64-ish.  Along with whatever criteria you decide to include.  If I now have this Arfcom SME Rating of "three tits" or whatever, can I now intelligently choose NV gear without relying on older ways of classifying these things, which have become muddled by "kit bashing" commercial offerings.

There was an initiative some time back, where these guys establish a system of criteria for a good AR build, and then listed what dealers/vendors offered what features.  It was a nice chart where you could readily see what's what out there.  Now granted, they had a mil-spec as a basis to go by, and general consensus that this was what your ideal rifle would look like.  I don't know if you can get to that here, but what the hell.

I can help you with that. My "Basic Out Of Band Illumination Enhancement System" ( BOOBIES ) will ensure you have all the "Tactical Illumination Torch Systems" (TITS) you need. We also have the "Omnidirectional Photon Projector Active Illuminator" (OPPAI) model, though so far that's only rated for use in Japan. In the mean time, the rest of the world will need to settle for BOOBIES. 

Once you collect all three, you score the elusive "3+ Tits" rating.

Heh heh, well, that would just be the firm middle ground.  I'm thinking a device that was say "gen III", "Omni VII", with whatever SNR, LP, etc. you wanted to add in would be rated "3 tits".  Not that it should coincide with gen ratings!  Perhaps it should be 2 firm tits. You guys jiggle it a little.

Look, at this point I'm a user/collector and verging on becoming a historian of this stuff, so I'm not selling shit so you can take all that for what its worth. I really genuinely don't give a shit what anyone buys or who they buy it from. Thats the realm of the dealers and sellers. I think your take on the market however is pretty inaccurate.

The way I've seen it over the years.

Mainline dealers. These are the top tier guys that are selling the top tier kit. You are paying full retail here, its all new, its all good. You get a shiny new data sheet ec.

Secondary dealers. Smaller dealers, mostly selling decent gear but also probably keeping afloat by selling some used gear. You are mostly paying full retail here for new units with data sheets, though you can probably find more "bargain" units, with less risk than other places but you will pay more since those guys probably test it.

Used dealers: these guys mainly deal in older or less desirable systems, build some stuff in their garage, probably no warranty. More risk, but you can save money. Usually you can find these guys on ebay etc.

Private sellers. Again, huge variability here, but most are pretty honest about gear in my experience.

As to the whole Gen2/3 deal, Probably all of those categories deal in gen2 gear. The best way I can put gen2 gear is:  its not gen3 but its not bad. I don't see anything like the "upgrading" you are talking about, but perhaps I misunderstand your term, gen2 is in the US a generally cheaper alternative to gen3. Overseas, where its hard to find Gen3 gear Gen2 gear is what is "the best you can buy" and quite honestly modern Gen2 stuff is pretty good. In the US it has to compete with modern Gen3 which drives the prices down significantly, which also means you are probably buying the cheaper gen2 tubes (i.e. Russian ATN tubes etc. and not high end stuff like photonis).

As for your "tits" rating system, sadly its more complicated than that. Personally from a price vs performance standpoint late 90's to early 00's gen3 gear is IMO the sweet spot, it can be had reasonably cheap and the performance is good enough. If you are a Arf-millionaire, then of course buy the best of the best, if you are the less talked about arf-broke dick, honestly even budget gen2 gear works well enough for 90% of what most people will do with it (at least in head mounted application, I'd change that answer for things like CNVD's). But as CJ7 said, its more complicated than just grading a tube, the optics matter alot, as do things like housings etc. For example PVS-5C's have vastly better optical elements than a PVS-14 for example, so just comparing tubes doesn't cut it. But given that alot of folks are going to go with a PVS-14 type system then you can compare the tubes, since everything else will be the same.

One Crude method, called FOM (figure of merit) takes SNR * Resolution to come up with a magic number. I forget if they changed it recently but anything above FOM 1600 was non exportable (pls correct me if I'm wrong on the number). Given how much weight is given to the tube resolution in that example I think its a poor metric, since IMO low light performance is probably more important but no one asked me when they were making these decisions.

So in closing: some tits is better than no tits, and the more tits the better... Does that help?

Tag.  Great topic.

A few guys have contacted me off of the forum regarding this. The issues have been addressed well enough that all of the insiders are pretty much in the loop. The beginners (and long term grunt users) have a tough time getting primed and requested some guidelines. I did not feel competent to generate the guidelines myself but I feel confident compiling information that I can cull from the sages located here. I have generated technical documents at the professional level and, with the appropriate guidance, I would like to try.

Here is what I think I need: A list of major architecture advances along with what those advances were able to achieve at a practical level and the tradeoffs that were made in the two steps forward/one step back situations.

In the end, I would like to make a directory of the general capabilities of each architecture along with a glossary of terms associated with those capabilities. All of this has been hashed previously but I would like to compile all of this information in one place so we can point to it for future reference instead of either constantly rehashing it or just giving someone the thumbnail instead of the full story that they want. I truly think this is worth the effort.

Before this goes a step too far, I would like to ask what anyone knows about the topics that are still taboo in this field of ITAR controlled devices. I worked in an ITAR environment for several years but I never really worried about ITAR leakage. We had a simple policy that made it easy to control - if you don't work in the area then you don't need to know about the product. Obviously, we have a wider latitude here, but I know there are some limits that lay unseen.

What is augmented reality?

Basically a HUD type display. Where you can integrate a bunch of data, or even overlay weapon sight images etc. Land-warrior type stuff if you are familiar with that old project.

OK, my apologies if I'm being "thatguy" and re-hashing all the stuff that has already been discussed.  I am firmly in that category as "grunt end-user" and don't know jack-shit about this stuff.  And evidently don't read much either.

That being said, I really like SOT's idea of compiling all this stuff into a new data base.  

On the market, I guess my focus is on the US, and more specifically what I see here at arfcom.  So I did not mean to exclude the international scene; just seeing things from my own perspective.

But to explain my obviously biased view, if you look at the EE and Industry forums for MNVD's, you will see the gen III stuff, then the newer gen II/II+ stuff, then the private sell stuff, both smaller dealers and guys just selling one-offs.  And yeah, it's just a given, to me, that you are looking at a -14 housing.  My end use is military or self defense apps.  So for me, the requirement is a gen III PVS14, like Harlikwin's sweet spot.  While I acknowledge that you have other situations in other countries, this is a huge market here in the US.  We have gen III available, and we can buy it.  In my case, since I am a broke-dick arfcommer, I sold off lots of weapons and equipment to get NV.  I make no apologies for that.  I am fortunate to live where I can buy this stuff, and I have been fortunate to be able to buy this stuff.  But I also acknowledge that others may not be so lucky, and hope that someday, they may be as fortunate as well.  

So establishing the fact that you have a market here for good gen III stuff, for military apps, what I am also seeing is an emerging market aimed at all the carnivores.  If you accept the fact that a guy can hunt (and do a lot of other shit I suppose) with less-than gen III quality, then you have vendors that are looking to fill this niche market.  This is the segment I was trying to describe.  You have a -14 housing, and various tubes, both foreign and domestic, that are very good, but maybe just below gen III quality.  But for their apps, they are perfectly acceptable.  Perhaps "retro" is a poor description here; more like "re-purposing" -14 parts kits with "alternative" tubes.    

Then you have smaller dealers and individual sales, which is a mixed bag for sure.

While I find it fascinating to learn about all these guys that "roll their own", my primary focus is on training, so the last thing I need is another interest!  But again, there are guys that do this stuff and I think it is pretty cool.  It's good to have these SME's around.  In fact, that is my whole purpose for hanging around here.  Trying to establish a better way of describing this stuff for end-users.  Particularly grunts such as myself.

The problem is that there is alot of variability in tubes themselves, so the best one can do is post rules of thumb. GenIII isn't a "quality" its basically a term used to describe a tube with a gallium arsenide photocathode, thats it, if you have gen3 you have a GA PC and a micro-chanel plate and depending on year produced some level of ion barrier film. If you have a Gen2, you have some variation of a multialkalai phtocathode and an MCP.

If you took a look through a omniII "GenIII" tube from 1991, and a shiny new photnis XR-5 or intens tube, you would take the XR-5 or intens every time, its just a better tube, because its made nearly 25 years later and gen2 technology has gotten better. If you compare a modern omni8 gen3 spec tube to a MX9916 from 30 years ago, then you will take the Omni8 spec tube, since its way better.

Like I said earlier in the thread, look at the SNR and the res and that gives you a ballpark of performance. With the understanding that the technology started with Gen2 being about SNR~12 and a resolution of about 30. And that "worked" for the US military for a good two decades for military purposes. Are newer tubes better? Of course they are. But it also doesn't mean that older tubes are not usable. It all depends on what you want to do.

You need to find the chick from Total Recall. She can help you out.

As far as this thread. Not being pessimistic but I don't see it going anywhere. At the end of the day I think it'll be hard for dole to fully agree.

OK.  I'm not saying you guys don't know what you're talking about.  Obviously you do.

I'm not saying the info is isn't available.  Obviously it is.  Sorta.

But I am saying SOT has a damn good idea about gathering this data into an easily readable format so end-users can compare all this stuff.  We're not all aficionados that love to read all this stuff for hours (although I feel myself being sucked into the vortex).  The assumption is that once this has been discussed online, well, there it is, go look it up, Battle.  And yeah if ya gotta, ya gotta.  But it would be nice to have an easier way to access and compare devices, at a glance.  

And BTW I am not discounting what Harlikwin and others are saying here.  There are some pretty cool advances being made with gen II stuff. And if that's all you have access to, or if it's all you really need, then by all means, have at it.   By the same token, if you have the need and ability to buy gen III stuff then throw down on it.

Great idea, but hard to do so that everything would be covered.

In passive use I'd guess most care about when the image fails due to photon starvation. Then in active use general image quality, contrast and so on. If the best of the best is not an option, you could still get great results for a certain use case, but sacrifice something else. Maybe a chart could have uses cases in one column and tubes / systems in the other.

Its almost like this very thing already existed, for many many years... With a big thanks and full credit to CJ7. Its not perfect, but its a good starting point if someone wants to reformat it.


http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_6_18/317705_.html

I know, but I felt like Diz needed the direct link.

While it may be funny, in my case I have read those stickys.  As I already said.  But hey thanks for the link anyways.

You guys act like all the info is there, done and dusted.  Really?  

While CJ7 DID do a fantastic job on the US Omni stuff, which BTW I used check out my tube, what about all the OTHER stuff out there now, which we are seeing in the market?  For example, NGI has some sweet devices for hunters.  You get the -14 kit with a choice of two grades of gen II tubes.  Of European origin.  OK, so you're supposed to dig through last_lancer's excellent foreign equipment guide and guess what those are?

What about the new L3 filmless?  

What about the Photonis "4G" INTENS WP?

The point is not that the info isn't out there; it's that someone suggested collated all that data into one spot for comparison.  Now if you don't think that's needed, fine, but don't act like it's already done.  

Maybe a new rating system is a reach.  But certainly putting all the raw data and specs out there, for head-to-head comparison in an easy to read chart would be extremely helpful, IMHO.

You can keep repeating "read the stickys" all you want.  What SOT is suggesting is not all there.

Roger that.  And hey man, this is your house, do not mean to keep arguing with ya.  Just think it's a good idea.  That's all.

It was amazing to review a lot of that stuff as we discussed in this thread.  There are a lot of foreign NV initiatives, and they continue to grow.  Most can't keep up with their own country's demands, much less private sales, and those that do are inordinately expensive.  So we have a lot to be thankful for in this country, including vendors like TNVC.  What you would pay for a good set of BNVD's in this country is what they charge you for MNVD's overseas, if you can buy them.  So the dog shouldn't bite the hand that feeds it.

I think NGI is a huge initiative for the hunters, stargazers, moonlight picnicker's, etc.  It gives a very good alternative for those that might not require full gen III/Omni VII performance.  And at a 2K price point, that might be easier to swing for a lot of folks.  So I think that's great and would be interested in seeing more info from those guys regarding their specs.  

Also I am very interested in the new L3 filmless stuff.  I'd love to see more info there.  If I could swing an upgrade there, I would.  Then later, with another-14 kit, I'd have a spare.  Tits.    

OK, and then there's Photonis.  I realize that is direct competition to TNVC, however, in the interest of full disclosure, I'd like to see their specs head-to-head with ITT and L3.   Just to know.

I don't think that would hurt TNVC, because if you look at who put out all the info here, like 10-12 years ago, and helped educate a whole generation of NV users, you would give them your business, because they are going the extra mile and reaching out to the public with info, training, as well as sales.  That's why I continue to support them.  Even if I'm a pain in their ass sometimes.

I'm going to echo Vics statement . If you want to know about a system, you need to get a spec sheet from a dealer, or failing that figure out what sort of tube is in the system. PVS-14 or PVS-7 etc is a form factor at this point.  Part of the reason you pay more for a "Dealer" system is that you get that data sheet, or at least a pretty good idea what sort of tube is in the system. If you are rolling your own you need to your homework. The beauty of CJ's thread is that he complied most of the common data available at that time (late 00's IIRC) and put it all in one place. Realistically that was great for people at the time since for the most part the data was out there but never put in one place for folks. And honestly there isn't much more to add past that at this point, you can goto L3's, Harris, or Photonis and download the generic spec sheets from them if you want a ballpark number for today's tech (and it will probably be close to the omni8 spec).

Earlier I did try to provide a historical perspective on the numbers by decade, and a rough idea what sort of performance difference you might see per given SNR/Res values.

As for your new system, I'm happy to answer questions and give perspectives, but its not really clear to me what you guys really want to do aside from re-invent the wheel.

Perhaps, one way to catagorize it for the lay person would be to say something like this:

This is the current state of the art helmet mounted NVG used by US SOF.  It is as good as it gets with current tech and here's why...

This is the current state of the art weapon mounted XYZ

This is the current state of the art precision rifle XYZ

Repeat for each respective application and go down from there into subsects of each application and what is/is not optimal for each.