I met these guys last week at a Point Blank vest demonstration.  My NV experience is limited-like the last time I looked through NV was probably 1996 before I got out of the Army.  Just about anything now seems impressive compared to fuzzy 15 year old memories.  Pulsar stuff is pretty inexpensive compared to some of the NV stuff out there.  Price is one thing, performance and durability is another.  Anyone have an opinion?

Dont know the system you are talking about, could you post a link?
Also that stuff you probably looked through 15 years ago is/was pretty good. It has improved some, but depending on which unit you were using you'd be surprised.

Supervison like camera system

Well in that case we have tacked thread on that do we not? Though for short range it may work well enough.

No clue what that means.  I guess some kind of insider jargon.  Here's the company: http://www.pulsar-nv.com/faq.aspx

I don't know a ton about them but over on the Euro night vision board they talk about their products a lot. They sell digital night vision and various units using traditional tubes.

CJ7Hawk would know tons more about their products then me as he has seen many posts on their products. He should see this and offer what he knows.

Most seemed happy with their products but you have to understand that across the pond their choices are very limited for good night vision. They pay through the nose for good quality gear. David will chime in with what he knows.

I could tell you about digital and Gen 1 in general but I don't want to give you bad info.


Harlikwin is telling you to check the supervision sticky that deals with digital night vision. Digital is much different then traditional night vision using a intensifier tube. Kind of like a Sony night shot camera. Much more to this but let David chime in about Pulsar before we continue.

To be honest, there's not much more I know about the pulsars specifically that you didn't say Dino.

 

Yup, we have a thread where Vic compared supervision to sever other night vision systems. The take home message from that thread was that if you don't mind using an "active IR" light then it would likely work at shorter ranges. In terms of functionality it sits somewhere between commercial gen1 scopes and gen2 scopes. It lacks the distortion of Gen1 systems but it really doesn't have much better gain. Also I don't have any experience with these systems so hopefully CJ7 can come set you straight.

Also if you are on a real budget the advice is to buy a cheap gen1 device (you can find them on ebay for under 100 bucks) or better yet look through one without paying for it to see if its something you think might actually work for your application. The advantage to buying the $100 system is that you can probably sell it on ebay and get most of your money out of it if you decide its really not for you, the more expensive ones generally don't work alot better. Generally "commercial" gen1 scopes are pretty crappy and rather limited, I would really liken them to active infrared devices from the 50's as you really do need a decent IR light source for them to work. Unfortunately even the old military IR devices usually work better than "commercial" Gen1 systems.

Also to confuse you further there is something called "cascade, or triple cascade" Gen1 which is what all military gen1 systems used to be. Triple cascade actually was the first passive night vision. And it still can work well if you can find an old military unit. But they are generally finicky and the important parts are mostly non-existent to repair them so don't go buying a broken one thinking you will fix it.

IIRC there's a archived thread on this scope.  I remember watching some you tube vids of it awhile back and thought the image looked pretty good in a snow environment.  Don't know what the conditions are on this vid, but looked pretty descent to me.

link

I'm thinking the frame rate may not be an issue with a scoped setup. The guys in the UK that use them for air rifles and pest control seem really happy with them-that could be from not having a better metric to judge them by though. One thing  really like is the ability to make custom reticles and upload them on a sim card... might be really nice for .22LR (lot of drop) or specialty loads you like.

I'd probably take one of these over a PVS2 or 4... Especially since I can put an IR illuminator on it. No worries about popping a tube, etc. can use it in daylight without issue.

It's very likely that the Pulsar sight isn't much different than what Supervision was trying to do, but it's worth giving the benefit of doubt until we get one in hand. I planned to buy one of these and had a dealer bookmarked for when they hit the market but when the time came they weren't taking orders anymore and the price was not attractive to me. Getting back to CCD based NV, the new color NV coming out is CCD based, you never know who is selling what these days.. CCD might be the way forward. Much lighter than IIT devices, much less prone to damage from exposure and shock, easier to integrate with Thermal Imaging (both are digital images) etc.

Not sure if this was mentioned before, but Pulsar Night Vision is a division of Yukon Optics.

CCD is one way forward, but the consumer level technology that is out now is still too close to Gen0/1 in terms of operation. They will need to increase the resolution of displays significantly ( to at least HDTV levels and higher ) and bring in some of the IR sensitivity enhancements before they even become a contender against Gen2, let alone Gen3 and the newer technology. Most of this new technology exists now, but isn't available to either the civilian or military markets in any serious volumes.