Re: Real world? Re: DS2/SG2 Camouflage

On Wed, 25 Feb 1998 06:40:56 -0600,
Doug_Evans/CSN/UNEBR@UNebMail.UNeb.EDU wrote:

>After all, bright lights on tank hull down in wooded depression spells
>target. ;->=

It depends on whether the exposed hull is "skylined" or not. Nova had
a good episode on camouflage a number of years ago. It turns out that
if you want to camouflage a vehicle that is "skylined" (that is, has
the sky behind it, as in a vehicle coming over a hill) what you want
is a bank of REALLY bright lights. 

The sky is very bright. Really, very bright, even on an overcast day.
The Nova people took an M113 and attached a bank of light bulbs to it.
Up close, it was really quite bright and noticable (but then, so is
your plain, drab M113). Out a couple of hundred yards and the lights
made the vehicle blend into the sky. It was impossible to see. A very
bright vehicle may be just what you want in a rolling desert
environment.

My take on this is you paint the vehicle in a camouflage pattern,
regardless of electronics. There is always a chance that you will be
attacked by a guy who lost his helmet and is using unaided eyes to
fire a portable anti-tank missile. This is the same reason the
vehicles in the Warhammer games are silly: the Land Raider isn't
impervious to weapons in all cases, so it makes sense to slope the
armour. For the same reason, you paint the vehicles camouflage. 

But here's another thought: how do the eyes of an alien work? As an
example, I always thought that a dog's eyesight was worse than a
human's. It turns out that it's different, not worse. They don't see
contrasts as well as humans, hence the reason that certain dayglo
yellow tennis balls are almost impossible for a dog to see in short
grass. On the other hand, dogs can see far better in the dark than a
human (anyone who's ever had to chase a dog amongst trees at night
knows that only one of you is running into foliage, and it ain't the
pooch...). Some hunters wear dayglo red vests with darker red
splotches to represent camouflage. Colour blind critters don't see the
dayglo red, they only see the contrasting patterns that break up the
human outline. Humans, on the other had, see the hunter from a great
distance and--hopefully--will not shoot at him. 

So, how well does a Kra'vak see the human-visible spectrum? A dayglo
pattern may be fully justified: the Kra'vak don't see your tanks too
well, but you've cut down on friendly fire incidents.

In other words, it's SF. You can probably justify any camo pattern you
want...

Allan Goodall	     agoodall@sympatico.ca

"Once again, the half time score, 
 Alien Overlords: 142,000. Scotland: zip."
  - This Hour Has 22 Minutes