Matrix Games Forums

Originally posted by jnievele
That's why thermal sights are only used for targetting systems but not for night vision goggles - it would be rather inconvenient for people to walk into trees all the time.

Not really. With thermal sights, you will still see every living tree, as they radiate heat. Ofcourse you might still stumble upon dead things lying about on the ground.

A WAG on my part is that thermal sights are hard to manufacture in a person-carried version, and night vision goggles work for almost all circumstances.

They were given the 'infantry tank' class, only as a convenient seperator, as mpost other classes were already taken, to keep them from showing up in other formations, and vice-versa!!

Originally posted by Ivan
but why is it called an infantry tank in spwaw*questionmark*

Infantry tank is the class used to place the Panther Uhu into its own formation.

In spwaw there are limited classes that can be used for tanks. They normally allow a particular type of tank, such as a Churchill to be placed into a particular formation while a different tank such as a Cromwell to be placed into a different formation.

I would guess that by the time we had created all of the German tank formations, all of the main tank classes had been used, so it was an expedient to use the next best class to assign to the Panther Uhu. It does not mean that anybody claims that the Panther Uhu was an infantry tank.

Originally posted by Capt. Pixel

My understanding (which may be flawed :rolleyes: ) is that this 'night vision' system also required a truck mounted ultraviolet spotlight source to illuminate the target area. The tanks were fitted with UV receivers which then allowed them to target and fire on those 'illuminated' targets.

In the game, the Panther G Uhu can also see through large amounts of smoke. They can penetrate 200 to 250m of solid smoke (more if the visibility range is higher

It was infrared, not UV. It could not see through smoke, and certainly not through vehicle-generated smoke (as the Russians did with sprayed oil/fuel over the exhausts). Even modern systems have almost no ability to see through vehicle-generated smoke.




tohoku
YMMV

Originally posted by jnievele


Passive IR systems (thermal sights) were invented a lot later - in the 1970s, IIRC. Even in the early 1980s, US/Nato-tanks were still using either white or IR illuminators, usually mounted on the gun barrel in the form of a big green box that was opened at night.

Passive IR was first deployed on British tanks in 1952. Centurion MkIII had it fitted in Korea, although active IR was the much more common type there. British had (active) IR systems available to them in numbers in 1947. The US deployed a copy of the German system in 1948 and passive IR (illegally copied from the British) in numbers in 1955.

Thermal Imaging (think of it as 'improved passive IR') came out in the 1960's and was deployed from the very late 60's-early 70's.





tohoku
YMMV

Originally posted by jnievele

Also, some plastic sheets are completely transparent to IR, so even though you can't see something in broad daylight because it's covered with plastic, you can see it in the thermal sights - an example of this is camouflage nets, which usually are transparent for thermal sights. Of course, since everybody know uses thermal sights, the new generation of camouflage netting will also block IR

You've got it back to front. The old, cloth camo nets could be seen through. The reason everyone swapped to plastic netting in the 1960's was that it was harder to see through with thermal sights - the colouring agents used in the plastics are opaque to low-end thermal/IR sights. The best modern netting has colours that bleeds heat at variable rates, meaning it's very hard to get a clear image of what's under them or even that it's netting - it just looks like a complex mess of heat patches, difficult to tell from background heat clutter.




tohoku
YMMV

Originally posted by tohoku



It was infrared, not UV. It could not see through smoke, and certainly not through vehicle-generated smoke (as the Russians did with sprayed oil/fuel over the exhausts). Even modern systems have almost no ability to see through vehicle-generated smoke.




tohoku
YMMV

Maybe yours can't, but the Abrams can. so can the FLir's mounted on AH's. I think it is called "Raliegh scaterring"

http://explorepdx.com/ir.html
For those to lasy to click, It's all part of the electromagnetic spectrum. What your eyes can detect is called visible light. What your skin detects is infrared. For your eyes to 'see' something, radiation in the visible range has to bounce off it. The difference in frequency between what bounces and what is asorbed is what provides color(sort of, it will do for now. If you want precision, look it up). IR depends on something different. One of the Laws of thermodynamics is that the universe is trying to get to an even temperature(I forget which one, it's been almost 30 years). So warmer objects transfer heat to colder objects(think of why the old lady puts her ice cold feet in warm spots on your body). That transfer is by electromagnetic radiation in the infared range. Modern equipment is sensitive enough to detect the difference in air temperature over a human hiding behind something. The Advantage of IR is that all living thing put out heat. Some dead things do also. While modern smoke generators include heat producing elements, they burn at a different temperature(put out IR radation on a different frequency) from the targets that they want to obscure. This means that they can be filtered out(Like radio stations, All the stations are filling the air at the same time, but your radio is set to just pick up one at a time). Plus the burning elements in the smoke don't stay in the air as long as the smoke. So the new smoke screens will only work against old gear. In the Gulf war the IR gear was good enough to pick out hot gun barrels at 3 km's. Some smart Iraqi knew his night fighting and was laying doggo without engines running and the hatches closed. He had land lines laid to control his platoon w/o broadcasting and was group firing at the muzzle blasts of the Abrams. He's dead now. His hot tube gave him away.
T.

Neat Sh!t T.

That Iraqi was pretty smart, but he should have made sure to make every shot count. If you only take one with you, it makes your death worthwhile, if you can get two before you go then you've done your job.

Yeah - that's some pretty cool info. Thanks!

So I guess the Panther G Uhu couldn't have actually seen through all the smoke. Probably some glitch in the vision routine. :rolleyes:

Old IR systems can't see through smoke

But even modern ones can't see through Hot Smoke which advanced tanks like the Leopard, the Abrams, the Merkava and the T-90 carry.

I might be wrong though...

Originally posted by Tomanbeg
Originally posted by tohoku

It could not see through smoke, and certainly not through vehicle-generated smoke (as the Russians did with sprayed oil/fuel over the exhausts). Even modern systems have almost no ability to see through vehicle-generated smoke.

Maybe yours can't, but the Abrams can. so can the FLir's mounted on AH's. I think it is called "Raliegh scaterring"

Putting aside your interesting description of what IR is, the fact remains that even modern systems have trouble with smoke that contains hot particulate matter.

Sure, vehicle smoke not be terribly effective, but it was just an example from the period people were talking about.

Quite a few vehicles are equipped (it's not like it's hard to build!) with smoke launchers these days that generate smoke that is very difficult if not impossible to see through, thermal sensors or no. They do this by containing material that burns at variable rates for the duration of the smoke itself: present a cloud of material burning at different rates and most sensors have trouble. The WW2 Uhu system certainly couldn't have coped. In order to see through this sort of smoke you need a *very* hot heat source on the other side in order to pick out - an Abrams is actually easier to see through smokes than many other types of vehicle simple because of the *huge* and intense heat signature it has.

More interestingly, a lot of the new smokes system are also using prismatic particals in order to defeat laser ranger - you might be able to see something well enough through smoke to shoot at it, but you still won't be able to range on it accurately. Vehicle-generated smoke also coincidentaly has the same effect, although, again, it's a bit random in effect.

It's entirely possible to build a system that *will* see through almost any smoke or obscuration (look at the British system for photomapping through cloud for a related example!), but the problem is building one that can deal with the processing involved in real time.

Modern systems do a better job than in the past, but they're not invincible, no matter how often you believe the advertising, T.




tohoku
YMMV

The best of both worlds, IR and Light Enhancement, are coming together soon.

Neat ****, heard about it on Mail Call I believe, definitly was a History Channel show.

I know of a guy who got his butt kicked by these Panthers becouse they were firing trough his smoke screens AND out to 30 hexes:eek: at night.

Seems the real system could NOT see through smoke AND could only site targets out to around 500 meters in the dark, which is what? 10 hexes in the game. Also I might add a infared spot light CAN be seen with the naked eye. It would appear as a dull illuminated red dot to somebody looking into the covered arche of the searchlite. If you know what your looking for they are easy to spot after awhile. We used to spot IR searchlights/headlights that way out in the field.

Seems like we need a patch to fix this "power gamer" unit. Right now it's a very unrealalistic unit. I would not use or allow an opponent to use them in ladder matches.

Also just to let you guys know here at Ft Hood they are playing with a sight for the M1A2 that uses somekind of x-ray waves or something.

Nasty stuff:D

Originally posted by Commander Klank
Also just to let you guys know here at Ft Hood they are playing with a sight for the M1A2 that uses somekind of x-ray waves or something.

Nasty stuff:D

Probably just to check out the chicks - Superman style

30 hexes??:eek:
Mine only work out to r10. Maybe in an older version of the game?
I don't think they should be toned down, just severely limited in availability.

Hello

I did a small test...I made a open field type battle with some Uhu's and bunkers for targets. I set the visibility to 5. And I used 12 batteries to fire smoke in front of the bunkers.
I noticed that the vision range was definitely 10 hexes but that the tanks did indeed see through 6-7 hexes of smoke..

I then pondered a bit...it's been quite some time since I played SP3 so perhaps someone else can confirm this. But I recall that in SP3 the various vision systems were coded like 10 = Infrared, 20= image intensifier and *maybe* 40 was the code used for thermal imager. So it could be that old thermal imager part still lurks in the code somewhere

Update (sort of) While typing this I got an idea and changed the IR vision of Uhu's to 36..meaning 9 hexes. And sure thing, the vision range was 9 hexes and they *did not* see through smoke. So editing the OOB file a bit would solve this problem, at least to a degree.

Voriax

Orzel Bialy posted:

""Owl" in German....as the AFV could "see in the dark"."

Didn't the Luftwaffe have a night fighter called the 'Uhu' also, due to it's radar system?

Eric Maietta

Perhaps a German speaker can help here, but wasn't the radar system codenamed Freya because it could see in the dark?

I suspect Uhu was the codename for night hunting.

Those Germans were not as imaginative with their codenames as the British, who liked to name major offensives after race courses.

Here is a site with information on the Luftwaffe's uhu:

http://www.simviation.com/gryphon/cfs1/he219-info.htm

Eric Maietta

Originally posted by Capt. Pixel
These are cool German tanks (avail 8'44)
Can anyone answer these questions? Was the system used as I described above? Is the system actually able to penetrate smoke as I described? What does 'Uhu' mean?

They may be expensive, but a platoon of Panther G Uhu can easily carry the day.

'Uhu' means actually "eagle owl" (Bubo bubo orBubo virginia) . The IR searchlights were also installed upon other vehicles. Check out the Czech OOB. There is a IR FO Vehicle... Hellowa truck... can observe arty fire in practically every situation, including the night.