RE: Cammo was: girl soldiers

G'day,

> Well, it just means that have to get your chemist to deliver 
> a paint that reflects light exactly like leaves - across the whole 
> spectrum, and not just one that has the right peak 
> emission for a normal person ;-)

I thought the whole point of cammo was that it broke the outline up not
necessarily matched the background perfectly anyway, so it'd have to be
a
combo of colours and shapes etc. This is especially true when you
consider
the range of "coloured sight" in humans, let alone when you try to think
about what other animals (and potentially aliens) see. For instance
beyond
the standard range of "normal coloured sight", UV sensitive, colour
blind
people, you get people like Lachy who are hue blind. Lachy can see
green,
except for certain hues which look grey or just blend in with any
surrounding green (so light green on dark green background is impossible
for
him to see). End result is that when playing with his "cheap plastic
green
and grey soldiers" he has to inspect their uniforms to see if they're
friend
or foe ;)

> Or even better, a chameleon skin the can also fully imitate 
> rock, grass, sand, bricks...

Not as weird as it sounds the skins of octopus can go from perfectly
smooth
to spikey resembling sea urchins, to rough resembling rocks etc. They've
also figured out that by using colours and shapes they can change what
they
look like. For instance I've seen octopus go from pretending to be a
rock to
an urchin to a flat fish to a seasnake to a piece of seaweed to a
stingray
all in under 5 minutes <it REALLY didn't want to have its DNA sampled
;)>
and each of these was a fairly good match. 

Cheers

Beth