I know they have cooled thermals with much higher res, but why has the civilian (affordable) market stalled out at 640?

I'm sure the .mil folks have something much much better, but I imagine the civilian market is topping out at 640 because that's the optimum price/availability point for 99.9% of folks looking to get into thermal.

Stalled? It seems to me that 640's are just starting to make it into more commercial products at more affordable price points .

As far as products beyond that isn't the military just starting to see a few experimental units. I would not expect that tech to see the light of day in a commercial
product until it is more main stream in certain military units and with Federal LE. I have a feeling if it comes to market it will come from China first.

FLIR and Iray have 1280 cores.  UNV shows a Iray 1280 core (not in stock) for almost $30k and that is just the core.

The juice isn't worth the squeeze...yet

Honestly, I don't think you need better than 640 res, what you need is bigger germanium lenses.  Native zoom would make 640 useful out to pretty huge ranges.

How about variable optical magnification, and/or field swappable lenses?

Stalled? Lol.  Guess you're new here.

A 1280 thermal core is about 4x4x2 in and weighs nearly 2 lbs. That combined with cost is why you don’t see them a lot in civilian hands.  You can go buy one.  They are for sale.

Yep, I’m new.

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I bought my first 640 thermal nine years ago.  We’re getting more pointless features, but who here doesn’t dream about a Skeet IRX or UTMX? That’s still the top of the game within reason, and it was back then too, so I’d call that stalled.

Its because there are a number of factors at play that balance out performance e.g. pixel pitch, focal length, FOV as well as basic detector resolution for example

(1) The DRI for a 12micron, 1280 detector with 35mm focal length will be 230, 460, 1850m for a human size target - the FOV will be 25 x 19 degrees

and

(2) The DRI for a 12micron, 320 detector with 35mm focal length will be 230, 460 and 1850m for a human sized target - but the field of view will be 7 x 5 degrees

so the real question is how far do you want to see and what size of field of view do you want to look at.

The advantage with the higher resolution detectors is you can push out the detection range a long way e.g. a 1280 paired with 150mm FL will push out the detection range for a human sized target to around 8km.  Likewise if you move up to a 1920 detector with a FL of 300mm you will push out the detection range for a human to 16km and the recognition range to 4km - the field of view will be around 4 x 3 (which at those distances is a lot of real estate).  

To put it another way - 320 and 640 are more than up to the job for people armed with conventional weapons and not involved in any form of highly specialised surveillance/recce.

I need this in my life

I for one would MUCH rather have germanium optical zoom lenses at more accessible prices before higher res sensors. Being able to go 1-8x would be incredible.

There's a bunch of Iray 1280x1024 Core video, on YouTube. It does look amazing - when the two dudes drive up in the Side by Side, the detail is insane.

That's my fetish too. I want high resolution when I dial into 8x, not all the silly pixelated crap we deal with on digital zoom. Target ID is important as hell and variable zoom would be bad ass for that