Night vision goggles

[Dentedend10]

Hi,

I am wondering if the night vision goggles are realistic - meaning was it used in the F14 as it is in the SIM?

thanks!

[LanceCriminal86]

Night vision was in use with F-14s during the 90s and 00s, yes. In later years there were lighting modification kits performed in the cockpit, which are not modeled, that replaced or added an alternative flood lighting and some other possible changes that aren't 100% clear as there's not a ton of documents for it.

[ValhallaAB]

''F-14D NK-104 (BuNo 164347) of VF-11 flies of the coast of California on 2 February 1995, VF-11 added the capability to use night vision goggles. These allows pilots to see in the dark, replacing instruments flying with a clear (but green-tinted) view of the world around them. The NVG's are mounted on the pilots helmet and flip up when not needed. Since NVGs mulitiply availalbe light hundreds of times, changes had to be made to the F-14's internal and instrument lightning. VF-11 developed a set of filters and lenses to fit over cockpit intruments and controls to allow the flight crew to change between normal and NVG lightning. (Ted Carlson, Fotodynamics)'' - Squadron Signal, Don Greer 2007

I heard the custom filters are things like the hud filter ''pull'' and the plastic screen ''brick'' which you put over the VDI screen when using the TCS or LANTIRN pod at night etc. 

[scommander2]

Sorry, try not to hijack this subject.

When night version googles are on, it is very difficult to see outside from HUD.  Is it normal? 

 

[LanceCriminal86]

1 hour ago, scommander2 said:

Sorry, try not to hijack this subject.

When night version googles are on, it is very difficult to see outside from HUD.  Is it normal? 

 

Yes, in order for most any optic or lit display to work with night vision, it needs to be very dim as the whole purpose of an NVG is to amplify light. On infantry weapons, any riflescopes, red dots, holographic sights such as the Aimpoint family or Eotechs, if you set them to the NV settings (on the versions that are designed to be NV compatible) the reticles will be almost invisible in normal light. But under night vision they should look okay without too much bloom.

The same principle would apply to any HUDs, MFDs, and button back-lighting. The other issue is that NVGs aren't really set up for autofocusing at different planes like our eyes are. The ANVIS and Cat's Eyes family of NV were designed for aviation use and may have been intended to be more forgiving about near and far focus, but the common PVS-14 used during the War on Terror years typically was set for distances more relevant for infantry use. One thing that was invented was a sort of quick-focus lever for NV monocles that would allow a user to quickly go from near-plane when they needed to read maps, notes, signs, check weapons, work on wounds, etc. and flipping the other way for a longer focal plane to see distance clearly.

I've been chatting with some of the Intruder folks who first brought the capability to the fleet in the late 80s, so that's actually a question I may ask them about whether the old Cat's Eyes and ANVIS setups were set to focus the cockpit controls or outside the jet to see terrain, tanking, etc.

I'm almost certain the existing F-14 modules don't represent any of the specific mods made to F-14 As and Bs in the mid-late 90s, so while you can use NVG in the cockpit you're experiencing it closer to what crews in the early-mid 90s did when they first started adapting that capability. That in turn is where the special HSD/VDI filters and lighting kits came up, and I believe at least for the B UPGRADE and D jets their HUDs may have had that super low setting for NV, but I'd have to ask some folks. I might have some later 'A' folks I could ask too about it and see what they recall on the old original HUD.

[RaisedByWolves]

Will NVGoggles be modeled onto helmet? That would be cool.

[Callsign JoNay]

2 hours ago, RaisedByWolves said:

Will NVGoggles be modeled onto helmet? That would be cool.

Yes it would be cool. A working/animated visor would also be cool. 

[LanceCriminal86]

In reality you'd not be having NVGs on HGU-33s, so trying to force that for both helmet types is going to be a problem. While the HGU-55 did have kits and mounting solutions there were also the HGU-68s with a similar mount, but before them there were also other dedicated helmets designed for NVG systems and there's not going to be a way to represent all of those directly (HGU-85, HGU-66). Realistically you'd lock out NVG use with the HGU-33 helmets and the years they were still in use, plus Tomcat crews didn't start using NVGs until quite a number of years after Intruder crews pioneered it and then Hornet squadrons started utilizing them.

Then you have the issue where with NVGs mounted the HGU-55's bungee visors should probably be removed as the NVG mount blocks where the visors rest. So that's a whole other animation issue to have to work out, mounting NVGs and removing visors, animating NVGs up and down, and then separately with NVGs off animating visors up and down for HGU-55 and for HGU-33. That's a lot of extra animation and model states to have to cram into the EDM and load/store and then display.

http://www.flightgear.dk/mountnvg.htm

[Gun Jam]

I haven't checked recently but I observed NVG not illuminating water. I could set the gain so the terrain was well illuminated however the water (ocean) was a solid black void of nothing. This would indicate that the water was significantly less reflective than dirt.

Gain could not be set high enough to get visual on the ocean.

I would suspect the water would either be much brighter than the dirt or would have bright lines from wave peaks as the crest reflected back for an instant.

-Gun

[draconus]

19 hours ago, LanceCriminal86 said:

That's a lot of extra animation and model states to have to cram into the EDM and load/store and then display.

Yeah, they'll have to model it some day, you know that, you're rivet counter

Let's wait for a wishlist sub after release.

[LanceCriminal86]

11 hours ago, draconus said:

Yeah, they'll have to model it some day, you know that, you're rivet counter

Let's wait for a wishlist sub after release.

Animated visors had already been on the "things they want to do" list and mentioned in the past, NV's just going to require some more stages/changes to that. It's looking like MT as it matures can lessen the impact of all the draw calls or having to store the different iterations, so it probably won't be unlikely to see them. Bungee visor just needs a down, up, and removed anim state, and then NVG with the brackets added on in a down, up, and off state. Then mix the two appropriately with keybinds/states to set them in the sim (or potentially also in loadout), ie NVG mounted triggers visor state to off then toggling NVG in sim should animate the visuals up and down.

It's really just a matter of time, probably not even an if or "wishlist" item since the HGU-55's already in the pipe. Who knows, maybe it could come along at the same time or be at least prepped since the HGU-55s going to need all that rigging anyways and there's plenty of references for the HGU-55 NVG kits. Wishlist would more be adding the NV lighting kits that were rolled to fleet squadrons somewhere after 1995 and added onto in later years as that means further art changes in the cockpit and ways to enable the lighting kit, and figuring out how it was controlled.

And after all, they'll need the NV stuff for the Intruder someday since as said, they pioneered it in the late 80s with VA-65 taking the capability on a first cruise in '87 and VA-35 soon after in '89. So with the Intruder you'd need to be able to have all that modeled and ready to go. And they had modified cockpits on some aircraft as well, which for a period of time were assigned a higher MODEX in the squadron in the 52x range. Similar to the later Tomcat mods the cockpit lighting was changed to green for NVG use.