75% of use a range fun

20% coyote slaying

5% all the other stuff that doesn't happen but it sounds good on paper

They will be bump helmet mounted

Will most likely use them for fun and to make use of my Dbal I2 IR laser. Some night walks to check for trespassing hunters/vandals.

A PVS7 is around 3k compared to a set of 14's or 7k+ (as well as other higher options)

PVS7 is still best bang for the buck for stationary observation - nothing beats having both eyes open.
also, its rather light for a "bino" and there's several 3x and 5x optics available, all at fairly good prices.
now, once you start moving with it, different story altogether. your brain thinks there's stereo vision
but there isn't as both eyes see the same image, ergo no depth perception.
the eyepieces are tiny when compared to a PVS14, if you have a '7 head or helmet mounted and it
only moves a tiny bit on your head, your eyes are no longer lined up with the eyepieces.
I love my 1800 bucks PVS7 off of ebay for what it is - my go-to for stationary observation at 5x and
as a loaner to friends, as soon as I plan to walk around or shoot - PVS14 or BNVD all day / night.

i think the 7's are best for a grab and go nv - i like to leave a set in the car so they are allways to hand , nicer to look thru for walking and driving than a mono but not much use if you need to shoot stuff - get a set then get the 14's as well

Shooting would defiantly be a part of the NVG set up, looks like I need to keep saving the pennies for a single 14 and then get the dual later on.

Good advice for your purpose!

I do like the 7 as an extra stationary observation.

When I bring a friend to hunt from a static position, I'll set up the 6.8SBR with the REAP on a tripod facing the short side and the AR-10 with the PVS-30 on the long side.  The guy with the REAP gets a -7 to compliment the thermal and the guy with the PVS-30 gets a handheld thermal to compliment the night vision.  One or the other or a third person will have the helmet with the -14 and the Breach.

Between thermal and NV working together, NOTHING hides.  It's evil...

But for just sitting or standing and LOOKING without having to get behind the rifle, the -7 with a 3x magnifier is tits!  And easy on the eyes...

What's so bad about a Gen3 pvs7 with a decent IR laser on the rifle?  That's my plan for getting into NV (but, looked through many hrs of NV while on active duty).  I see why a mono tube'd pvs14 would have its advantages when aiming a weapon mounted optic and walking around, but pvs7's behind a weapon mounted laser have done it's fair share of carnage!

I have same plan as op, and hope to get a thermal mounted scope at some point, if the night becomes addicting (which it likely will).  I've strongly considered a thermal rifle scope as the 1st purchase, since prices have plummeted, and since it has night/thermal AND a reticle in one package.  But, personally, I'll use a head mounted NVD more than a dedicated rifle scope (even tho I can QD/remove the thermal scope and mono-view with one hand up to my face).

I LOVED my 7’s. I’ll take 7’s over a single 14 any day of the week. Having only one eye under NV blows. I don’t care how much I do it.

And you get get 7’s in the EE for around $1500.

In fact I’m thinking about selling my two 14’s, paying off some bills and just grabbing a 7.

The only difference I saw between my 7’s and 14’s was in my bank account.

YMMV

My first NV purchase was a PVS14, but I recently pick up a Gen 3 Omni VII PVS7 for under 1K it has 2 blems, but nothing that is in the way when actually using them. I also just got back my dual Gen3 Omni VII pvs-14 on a D-14 bridge. IMHO a PVS7 is definitely a viable NVD and IMHO there is no difference in looking through a set of duals and a Biocular 7s. The depth perception is exactly the same as far as stereo vision, I'm not sure about others but when I look at something it the same thing with both eyes, so there is no difference to me with duals or 7s. Like another poster stated if your hunting use a IR laser/illuminator and your GTG. If you do not want to put out any IR signature buy a 14 or duals with the ability to flip one up to use your RDS. Another thing people say is you loose the ability to read lighting conditions simply move your 7s or duals slightly forward and tilt your head up or shift your eyes to the side to know where its bright and where its not.

I’ve had several pvs7s and pvs14s, I always end up keeping my 7s. I’m in northwest Ohio, where are you located in Indiana?

Biggest thing that turned me off to a PVS7 is it is double the weight of a 14.

I bought a pvs7 off the EE about a month ago I couldn't be happier. They have done everything I wanted to.

Agree 100%

7's are way better. all day every day. 14's are a lie

Depth perception from stereo parallax only varies much between people. Some indeed don't see any and a 7 will look just like a bino. Also the accuracy of regular depth perception with all the regular cues (with just eyeballs) varies from person to person.

If you have the oculars set to different diopters it can mess with your ability to form a better perception of depth. Doesn't need to be off by much.

This is only me and my experience, but I could describe binos (and any other device that generates depth via only stereo parallax) as the view looking "physically 3D", the objects become more "real". Unlike with a biocular or a mono where objects are not separate from each other in that sense, nowhere near.

An easy example is low hanging bruce tree branches. With binos you can (more) easily see what parts are of the branches, and what is that which is behind them. The thing behind looks to be further. With no stereo parallax I lose that ability unless I move around and that way the depth cues are revealed. But even when moving it's not the same.

If I set the diopters so that the "image plane" is far away (diopter near zero) I see objects being closer than the image itself (the black edges of the tube image looks to be further away than objects I am looking at). Set diopters to say minus one or two and the opposite happens, though not as easily noticed and I find it generally harder to use binos if the "image plane" is too close.

Thanks for the clarification I hope to use mine as you described with slightly different diopter settings. Hopefully this will work for me or I just spent 4k more than I had to to buy a 7. Although my 14 are blem free, crystal clear and work extremely well in darker environments.

Why PVS-7s are STILL in active circulation in the US Military in 2018 is ridiculous...

They should have been offloaded to the Iraqi or Afghan armies and -14s made the standard.

Old Infantryman here.  PVS-7Bs worked for me in the Infantry, back in the day.  The pair I have now still work.

ETA: Plus I got my 7Bs at a ludicrous price.

I have a PVS-7B I got off the EE in 2014, and I love it. Much more comfortable for me personally than having one eye seeing in the dark and the other seeing black.

Yes, the PVS-14 would be better in a tactical situation where you need to be able to respond to changing light conditions or use white light.

For hunting and watching a feeder from a static position, give me the 7’s any day. That said, I DO want a white phosphorus PVS-14 from TNVC. It’s nice to have the option to video through the device or mount it behind a red dot, none of which you can do with a PVS-7.

Bottom line, the PVS-7 works fine and seeing in the dark> not seeing in the dark.

Sorry I maybe wrote it out poorly, I meant that even a rather small difference in eyepiece diopters between the two sides can throw your depth perception off, not as in how far you think something is, but overall diminishing the 3D effect and thus becoming closer to how a PVS-7 looks like. Example: having -0.5 at the left eye, -0.75 in the other (assuming ones eyes being 20/20 or using corrective glasses). I don't know how much this effect varies from one guy to the next.

Eye dominance and how strong it is sure plays a role here too. I would suppose the more easily you can use either eye for aiming as an example, the easier it is to see depth. Some people don't see just about anything from their non-dominant eye, even to the point that aiming via the wrong eye is close to impossible. I've seen one guy who when asked to put a NOD over his non-dominant eye quite literally asked "where is my left eye?" Sounds funny and it sure was, but both eyes open it was impossible for him to see (almost) anything from his non-dominant eye. Of course it will still help in depth perception as the brain processes the data regardless if it is consciously seen or not, but I think this has something to do with how accurate your depth perception is from stereo parallax, two offset images.

I guess you then meant that you'd like to use the objective lenses set to different focus distances. Previously I had major issues when doing that and generally saw worse than them both set to the same distance. Since discussing here of the subject I've been training it and it's become a lot easier, and maybe even useful. Some people say it's the only way to use binos and I don't doubt it is for them. I can see that if it works for someone it can be beneficial to be able to see up close and far away, without changing focus / using a refocus flip down system.

Edit: forgot to add that collimation with a dual PVS-14 can be off by a mile and affect the situation negatively too. Someone will disagree on this I am sure, but I have no doubts about it. I think it may have been NVjunkie who said collimation is just a fancy word. Sorry if it was not you! I agree you can merge images that are offset badly, but also think it will affect your perception in different ways plus be straining over prolonged periods of use.

Thanks for the reply, I really have to spend more time under duals and luckily both of mine are culminated and I have no eye strain at all. My biggest challange is to get my center of gravity sorted out with my brain bucket since it waa originally set up for a single 14. It may be that my duals are so clear vs my 7s I'm really not seeing/appreciating the amount of depth I'm getting running duals. My original statement of they're the same I tried to factor in the clarity difference to try and level the playing field between the 2. Thanks again for your knowledge.

Ah alright. With duals you mean a bino or dual 14 or both?

I reread your earlier post and yeah true at a longer distance things do look much the same with binos / mono / biocular.

I didn’t say it was fancy. Just a term people regurgitate to sound informed.

Binos are engineered to be collimated, parallel to each other, and that’s great.

Show me the person who has the perfect head, and eyes that are perfectly symmetrical to take advantage of that. Sure, everything is “close enough” but it’s not perfect. Just like your ears aren’t perfectly equal on each side of your head.

Just like there is adjustments to account for the different strength of each of our eyes there should be for the position too. Because rest assured, your eyes are not in the same position in each side of your skull.

To put it another way, if you went to a place that produces NV and had the money to pay for a customized one off, they’d take all kinds of cranial measurements and construct a customer housing or bridge. The glass and everything else would be adjusted specifically to your eye strength and the two tubes would certainly not just be perfectly parallel to each other. Both would probably be off a couple of degrees.

You're right nobody has a perfect shaped head or eyes that are exactly pointing where "they should", or anything like that.

Even with a irregular shaped head, the world around you will stay the same, light coming to your eyes will come from the same angles. As far as I have understood, the point is to make the view from binos to replicate that as much as possible - meaning if they are collimated the way these eyepieces allow, you should have roughly parallel views which is closer to the real world than two binos having optical axis pointing at different directions.

I once had a MUM with a wildly off center axis probably because of the tube that was in it and I had issues with that even when used as a mono. When bridged to another MUM I could see that stars don't fall on the same "resting position" than they do when I relax my eyes without NODs. Relaxing so that you get a double image and see two stars instead of one when looking at it. I guess that tells my eyes aren't perfect either as if when relaxed my eyes went to a straight forward and parallel position I'd not see two stars. When using a collimated bino this does not happen and the relaxed view looks quite the same as without the bino. That is what I think is the point behind this kind of collimation.

You are used to your irregular head & eyes and a NOD view that matches or mimics in certain ways the light coming in from the unassisted world is better than to have the optical axis pointing where your eyes naturally point to. Like if one has eyes like this then still a paraller view from binos provides something that you are used to see unlike would if the bino sides pointed one down one up.

Edit: maybe a good example would be a clip-on with day scopes. The zero is held even if two different day scopes are not pointed the same. Even if they were "collimated" the way ANVIS / 14 eyepieces allow the POA would have the same offset with two different day scopes instead of shifting into a random direction.

I agree that a bino bridge that would allow placing the sides at exactly where your eyes are at, at different heights for example, then yeah that could be better. But I think most don't have so much offset in their eye location that an ANVIS / 14 eyepiece could not correct. While the eyebox is not that large, it doesn't distort that badly if the bino is slightly off at one eye and centered on another.

Sam, thanks for the reply. I think the elephant in the room is even if light loss/image degration from a biocular 7 how does a set of duals or binos have better depth perception vs a pvs7 since either is looking at the same image?

I'm no expert but I'll take a crack at this:

With a PVS-7 your eyes are looking at the same exact image independently.  With binos, each eye is looking at it's own image.  Even though they are only a couple of inches apart, your eyes give you that depth perception by each seamlessly presenting the same image from different perspectives simultaneously.  This is what the PVS-7 can't do.

DLS. Thanks for the reply, I get what your saying, but what I don't get is with binos/duals your looking at the same exact image with each eye. With 7s your still see the image independently with each eye it's just 1 image that is split. Your brain still merges both images that each eye see weather it's through binos or biocular.

Munny, I think the thing you are missing is that with duals you are not actually seeing the same image with both eyes. You're seeing the image from two different perspectives about an inch and half or two inches apart. That's what gives you stereoscopic vision. Here on Wikipedia.

SpyHawk, thanks for the link. In essence what it said is it is possible to have depth perception with single vision it just will not be as vivid. From that info I can say that is a good repentasion of what I'm between my duals vs my 7s.
From the link:
The perception of depth and 3-dimensional structure is, however, possible with information visible from one eye alone, such as differences in object size and motion parallax (differences in the image of an object over time with observer movement),[2] though the impression of depth in these cases is often not as vivid as that obtained from binocular disparities.

Other easy examples of depth from stereo parallax are 3D TV's, 3D movie theaters, stereograms and VR headsets. If you see major 3D effect from any of those, you should benefit from a bino in the same way.

But like said, that varies from person to person. Some don't see that effect almost at all. Edit: a quick google search gives figures of ~15% of people having major difficulties and somewhere around 3-5% don't see the effect at all.

For static observation a biocular or a mono is just about the same, as you won't see stereo cues that far anyway. At 50 meters it'll be almost the same with or without stereo vision. At close distances the effect is the strongest and thus helps with situational awareness & traversing rough / unfamiliar terrain.

Best I could describe the first impression / feeling is that with binos objects look as if "I could touch them and be sure they are physical" but with no stereo vision I don't get that feeling.

I will be using a dbal I2 on my rifle for range/hunting applications with IR as well as a surefire dual spec for an IR ilum to answer that question.

If I get PVS14's I'd buy a pair not just a single, if I was ok with a single eye having NV I wouldn't look at the 7's.

If I could find some 7's for 1k or trade away a rifle for them I'd give it a shot and worst case re sell to buy 14's if my needs aren't met.

Yep.

Tube performance is barely any different to a PVS-14,..... -7’s were used to curb stomp the 7th largest army in the world not too long ago, they are still fantastic goggles. IMO, 14’s aren’t worth the extra cash unless you just have to have 14’s.

I know it’s not popular to say it in a forum full of people that are fully invested to the tune of $3-4K in their-14’s, but i’ve had both and a used -7 with decent tube specs is absolutely your Best Buy in NVD’s. Ergonomically, -14’s are better but I can put up with a few shortcomings for the cost difference.

Support probably won’t be an issue for a long time, it’s still possible to support vietnam era PVS-1’s and 2’s and those were never sold in the quantities or to civilians like -7’s were/are.

I wanted 14s, but felt I needed decent NV now. I traded a rifle for a set of Gen 2+. I still want a 14, and will eventually get one, but with the 7 and an IR laser I still have a significant advantage over most of the world even with its limitations.

Every set of 7s (B or D) I used in the Army were hands down better than any 14 I drew from the Arms room. My theory was that everyone thought 14s were just better; I wouldn't say they are by any stretch (and that's after owning both personally and using both for 12yrs playin Army). They always worked, they were harder to break, and it seemed that since they were bigger they were stored better (i.e. Not in Joes pocket is tossed in an assault pack pocket).

Like the dude above said; "you're" invested in your 14s; that's cool. "You'll" probably defend them til "you"die Bc you paid more as well. But folks that simply discount the PVS7s as old tech or obsolete aren't giving them their due kudos. And let's be honest; unless you're a LEO or a member of the Military were all just LARPing with expensive toys. ;)

Miss my 7. Definitely going to buy another.

Too much truth in one thread. People's heads might explode.

No doubt I just spent a total of 5k for dual 14s on a bridge. Don't get me wrong the 14s tubes curb stomps my 7s ( slightly grainy) in both definition and clarity, but if I have gotten my 7s first I would have stayed with a single 14 , bought a couple 7s for loaners about 3k in my pocket and be still sleeping in the same bed as the wifey. The reason I wanted 14s with manual gain, separate batteries on a bridge is to be able to split them up in a SHTF situation. A single 14 is better in a tactical application IMHO due to being able to use my RDS passively and IR laser as a primary aiming device. There are huge differences between a mono vs binocular/biocular but a very small difference between binocular dual tubes vs biocular single tube 7s. Also some bitch about the weight of dual 14s but are also promoting the new much heavier ruggedrized DTNVGs. Go figure, if it doesn't cost more than what works very well especially for the price it's old out dated tech that is no longer viable.

Not sure if you meant me as promoting the DTNVG, but I have to correct you in that it is lighter weight than a dual 14. The RNVG is a bit heavier than most new binos, but not by much.

Again on the biocular versus binocular view, it varies from person to person. One may not see almost if any difference, and some see a big and obvious change in depth perception. One needs to try it out to be sure whether he/she personally will benefit from it. Most do.

Where I agree is that the 7 is still a perfectly good option if you can get a good price on one.

Nope I wasn't quoting you on any of that post and your info is very informative to all

I guess I'll give my two cents in here... I've used NVD BNVDs, ANVIS-10s, ANVIS-9s, PVS-7s, and PVS-14s. All are great and have their own pros and cons.

PVS-7s are 100% a viable option and one of my favorites. If you're a law enforcement officer, contractor, etc etc then yes I would say you should get every advantage possible and save up for a set of true BNVDs. But if you're just looking to hunt, hike, plan for civ SHTF, or even just whack steel at night, the PVS-7s will be an awesome option for you.

I'm a civ on a budget, and as fun as having $8k+ on your head is (BNVDs + ballistic lid + batteries + all the lumens), I get more enjoyment out of a bump helmet and a set of 7s because I'm not constantly worrying about breaking the equivalent of a down payment on a house.

Oh and lastly, those who say PVS-7s are just so terrible because of no depth perception... I tore 5 ligaments in my ankle while wearing BNVDs because of one misplaced step on a mountain.

Fact 1: All NVDs have bad depth perception; some worse than others. It's just a training issue. Fact 2: Most civs with NVDs would get their asses handed to them even if they had ANVIS-10s and all the latest gear but went up against a professional with gen 2 PVS7s. So none of this really matters

Alright (insert beer emoji, dunno how it's done)

And yeah, training is no 1 no way around it. In the specific gear category that's NODs better system will help a beginner as the closer it matches your daytime view the easier it'll be.

7 is easier than 14 in that sense, but places more restrictions.

Offtopic: Katod makes an interesting biocular that uses 60deg optics with a larger tube with larger photocathode and thus can make some for the lost resolution due to wider fov. Never heard anyonr use one or seen one, but in a biocular a larger tube might go just fine.

I found what should be a good deal on ebay for some 7's (please stop bidding its my birthday) so hopefully I can land that deal.

Ok, I had to go Google that. Katod ONV-60

I tried sending you a pm but your inbox is full so I sent you an email.

Delete

Well if this auction doesn't break 1k in the next day I'll have a set of 7's

Next step will be finding a helmet for my big head 7 5/8 (hat fit) is TIGHT

Surplus ACH, like $150 or less. Try stormseeker surplus, google that. I replaced an issued ACH with one of theirs after one grew legs at NTC.