I've been seeing gen 2 with white phosphor tubes as an offering.

Does the white phosphor reallly make that much of an improvement?

Thanks.

The only thing different between white and green phosphor is color.  All the magic happens before it hits the phosphor display.

So I have started to look into this and that statement might not be entirely true. In the case of an L3 tube etc for sure there is a ton of NV magic that happens before anything hits the phosphor. But I have started to read about different manufacturers using slightly different P45 phosphor recipe and whatever "magic" there is in the L3 version is reportedly superior to what ITT and other manufacturers are doing.

For the OP. My only WP tube is a gen2+ and I don't particularly like it. I would happily trade it out but since its in a CNVD its not exactly easy to replace/recollimate.

While the function of typical green vs typical white is basically equivalent, your statement is not 100% accurate, different phosphors can have different attributes that might make them more  or less desirable for  certain applications/customers. For example The "refresh rate" of some phosphors may vary which has repercussions for anybody operating vehicles or aircraft.

There is an interesting chart showing some attributes of the more common phosphors, I will try to find it later.

+1. What makes a tube a great tube or just an ok tube in regards to performancr are the manufactured specs. The phosphor color as only a little to do with how well a tube perfoms, as stated above, becase it is the very last step in the process of intensification. It converts the multiplied electrons back into photoelectrons to form the monochromatic image. There are many different colors of phosphors and all can theoretically be used in an image tube phosphor screen. Which one is best for contrasting images is argued widely, and from all ive seen all claims up to this point are pretty subjective and havent seen any concrete proof that white is better than green especially when one considers that the image output by tge L-3 WP tubes is more of a gostly bluish whitish color on black and not truly a black and white image. From what i understand from what has been told to me by a few different knowledgable people is that the human eye has a hard time seeing colors at longer wave lengths which a blueish color would deffinitly have. There are good arguments made on both sides of the debate but more testing and research deffinitly need to be done to get more concrete proof of white and green being bettrer or worse for image contrast.

Ok, so maybe not all the magic happens before the phosphor but a solid 90% or more of the magic happens before it get to the phosphor screen.

Something like that...

Realistically the older P20/P22 phosphors have fairly long persistence times, i.e. they glow longer when hit with an electron. Which in theory makes the "brighter" since they are "lit up" more of the time. These were mainly used in Gen0, Gen1 and early gen2 and a few early gen3 systems to squeeze out the last bit of "gain" out of a tube and they are fairly well matched to the human eye for most "contrast". The downside to this is that you can get "streaks" when you have highly dynamic scenes, which is a major downside in a fire fight or piloting applications.

The P43 phosphors used on most Gen3 stuff have a much lower persistance which means no streaks, and is better for piloting. Also, the wavelength they emit at, seems "brighter" to the human eye, but in theory show less contrast.

P45 emits across a broader span of the human visual spectrum, which in theory might offer some advantages for "Brightness perception" and contrast.

In practice, I have looked through phosphors made in the 50's all the way through modern day and honestly I don't know how much I buy into the above claims. The persistence thing is real for sure, especially with cascade Gen1 systems. Its alot less of an issue on gen2 systems.

I have capitalized the most important word in that sentence.

I honestly don't know. Guys I respect tell me the L3 white phosphor is the best thing since sliced bread. That holds weight with me. I think they are great tubes but I am not sure the cost is worth it. Would love to have one but I am not paying the asking price. Will stick with green until the price is more affordable. I am sure it is the cats ass but I tend to go with affordable that works.