Veritasium
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 4 months, 2023–2024
27:16 · 8.4M views · Nov 4, 2023
Veritasium visits the US Navy's Crane facility to test top night vision goggles. It explains how image intensifier tubes and thermal or digital systems work and compares the generations of the technology.
Commenters point to it as a clear explanation of the different types of night vision and why analog image intensifiers behave differently from digital ones.
5 comments from Hacker News
You will find Veritasium's video on night vision goggles [1] very interesting. He explains well how they work, and the pros and cons of each implementation and generation. [1] this video
If you want to learn more ... Vertasium has a good video on the 3-different types of Night Vision. this video 1. image intensification 2. active illumination 3. thermal imaging
this video There are three types of night vision, and the consumer grade active illumination stuff using infrared light is covered by EAR (Department of Commerce’s Export Administration Regulations) instead of ITAR (which is still significant, but less strict). Which doesn't detract from your point, which is that night vision is hamstrung by regulations. With all the advances in technology, the consumer grade stuff should really be more accessible because it would save lives if drivers could see better in the dark.
In case anyone else finds this interesting, the DOD has night vision goggles which have nearly-zero latency (all analog), amplify much better than digital cameras, and emit very little external light (hard to spot by adversaries). This veritasium video at 12:00 shows how these goggles work: this video That said I wouldn't be surprised if someone in the DOD was buying them for general tech exploration though.
I watched this video a month ago that might explain it: this video . Basically it said infrared goggles use digital processing, so there's at least one frame of lag for every image, which can cause those issues. Image intensifying googles are totally analog so there's no lag to avoid that issue.