The photograph is pretty bad—night vision doesn’t really photograph all that well, nor does the COTI, the naked eye visual is much clearer and cleaner.
Moreover, the setting that the photograph was taken doesn’t necessarily highlight what the COTI is most useful for, it was just what I was able to take last night to give a general idea of what it looked like with an UF WP tube.
This is a better demonstration of the COTI in use (thin filmed OMNI VIII Green tube) in an urban area with mixed lighting during one of our Night Fighter classes, students are attempting to use concealment approximately 50+ yards away or so, and I cycle through the different detection modes (full thermal, patrol, and outline):
The COTI and E-COTI are front projection, so through the image intensifier tube, the thermal image will always be “white,” as the tube is not capable of replicating color, unlike dedicated fusion systems like the FGE or ENVG that can generate color thermal.
Beyond that, there’s not really much available on the horizon yet for commercial available fusion systems besides the COTI besides gray market goods, though I personally am a big fan and would love to see (and will do anything I can to help) wider availability of fusion systems.
One of the issues that adds complexity and sensitivity—and therefore cost to many currently fielded fusion systems is that fused NV and thermal is arguably the least interesting thing they do, rather, it’s the suite of augmented reality capabilities that they have that aren’t really something the commercial or even most LE markets can really take advantage of without networked capabilities which make the goggle itself seem like the cheap part of the system.
Think of it this way: a PVS-31A is about $10-$12,000 depending on the kit, and an E-COTI (which does also have some augmented reality capabilities) is $7,850, with a system cost of ~$20,000 give or take, yet the PSQ-36A FGE runs about $37-$43,000. Even L3 is not so brazen as to charge $17,000+ just for “synergy” just for combining the two.
~Augee