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Thermal imaging in the real world


F.T

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27 minutes ago, F.T said:

I've found that thermal imaging in the real world shows more detail and doesn't have the jagged edges that sometimes appear in the steel beasts.

 

 

 

 

 

steel beasts gives you the option of creating your own maps from a limited set of tile images- you can find the terrain and correlated TIS images in your installation directory; steel beasts is neither technologically advanced nor financially independent enough  to do it all- you can construct your own maps, but they often will not quite offer the same results as pre-rendered maps which cannot be altered by the user which you see in other software. the flexibility of a sandbox editor comes at a cost in some graphic details you might get with pre-rendered environments; in fact you don't really see software which does it all anywhere- you might see a game developer invest their resources to produce images like this, but you don't get the same level of simulated vehicle systems or custom map or scenario creation. everyone must pick and choose their battles. some graphics situations look good in war thunder- primarily at close range, which is what that engine was developed for, not relatively long range engagements on maps which can be created from scratch and edited by the user. electronic arts is capable of putting out good looking games, but this is paired with gameplay that relies almost purely on visual images and sound and usually are more like interactive movies on rails; this isn't to say of course nobody wants as much as they can get, but if you look at all games available- all of them in some way have a focus given their resources or target audience or goals or what have you

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Often enough these thermal imagers use (tiny) CRT monitors to display their images. That alone softens the pixel edges. Also, you need to downscale a screenshot from Steel Beasts to the same size as the pictures that you presented as an example. Finally, a real environment has more variety in thermal emissions than our synthetic environment, which certainly improves the overall impression you get.

The design principle in Steel Beasts, as far as electro-optical systems is concerned, is that all images be rendered at the resolution of the imaging sensor, then scaled up to the chosen screen resolution. This is done to limit your ability to identify targets at unrealistic ranges; as such, it follows an important training goal, that crews use all sensors available rather than completely relying on the thermal imager. Of course we could have chosen to render the thermal image at full resolution (you can see that when testing a mission, if you use the free-float camera and activate the thermal view (Num+); it looks better of course, but I'm unwilling to sacrifice training value for looks even if two Bundeswehr morons effectively demanded pretty much that not too long ago.

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...also it is very  important to understand difference between 1st and 2nd generation cameras.  As a rule of the thumb image rendered  by 1st gen TIS consists of about 100-260 lines (take 127x150 pixels photo, resize it to 1280x1080 pixels and see what is going to happen), depending of detector assembly design(number of elements) and scan  pattern, while 2nd generation  devices  provide HD image resolution(because detectors contain more  sensing elements). Plus  some second generation cameras have advanced image processing and rendering capabilities, let's say somewhat resembling antialiasing.

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