Infra-/Ultravision and how to picture it

[mhd]

This topic is probably going to get a bit weird, as we're basically talking about explaining the missing color(s) to the color-blind, probably even worse. But it's a pretty common ability for fantasy races to have some kind of improved vision. Sometimes this just is simple "nightvision", and even D&D moved towards that rather handwaving solution to things (monochromatic "darkvision").

 

But before that, we reveled in the glory of infra- (and sometimes ultra-)vision, so let's stick to that for a while.

 

Now, in popular culture, we're basically seeing two versions of "infravison": Thermographic imaging ("Predator"-vision) or night vision (the military kind, which, AFAIK, isn't just about the infrared spectrum). In other words, either a wide range of heat-themed false colors or shades-of-green (IIRC the color we can distinguish the most nuances of). I don't really know a lot about UV imaging, other than having seen black light on crime shows and in night clubs...

 

Now the first thing I would have to think about when picturing how your average elf/orc/dwarf would see the world is whether that's always on or an alternate mode of vision. Quite a few fantasy settings use the latter, probably to make it easier to relate to human perception during normal circumstances. One of the few pieces of fiction that actually delved into the topic a bit were the infamous Drow stories by Mr. Salvatore, where it pretty much was thermal imaging, and they had to switch it of for a few purposes, deciphering non-thermal writing being one of them. If that's some kind of auxiliary mode, this false color mapping might even been the brain's way to unify the different modes to a common denominator. Probably one of the better way to approach things, as it's easy enough to explain in the game.

 

So in this case, someone gifted with infravision would switch between different ranges, with both modes overlapping little.

 

Now, with a visual range that includes everything, I'm naturally a bit confused about how to picture it. If I "just" can't see red because my visual spectrum ends a bit above it, there's a color missing. Maybe even with the world getting just a bit darker?

But adding infrared goes beyond that. It's not just that I get a new color (nuances) added to my portfolio, I also get a completely new light source (heat)! This is rather trippy. So let's say I got a hot blue gas flame. It's quite blue, but it's also rather hot. Dude, I'm freaking out now! Would this most likely be a matter of precedence, so with wide-spectrum vision I'd always see that part of the flame as blue, as it's emitting light, but e.g. a rotting blue plant would be some shade of infrared once the light gets turned off and I can't see the vivid color anymore?

 

And still not sure entirely what passive UV vision would bring to the table. Better vision under starlight? Nature prematurely optimizing for raves?

[Tasha]

Ok first:

 

Infravision is the "Predator" style heat vision. I would imagine that it would show up in shades of red that are beyond our ability to see.

Ultravision is the "Night Vision" glasses the Military uses (or close enough). I guess you could say that instead of green that the subjects would be in shades of a purple that we normal humans can't percieve.

 

Active means that the vision user is shining a "flash light" in the correct spectrum. Which for other users of that wavelength gives a bright light to home in on.

Passive uses the ambient sources of that kind of vision.

BTW for D&D style "Darkvision" I use Nightvision (this is also the proper power for light enchancing goggles).

[IndianaJoe3]

Another possibility is that it looks like this F1 video - mostly black and white, but the hotter areas are colored.

[Ockham's Spoon]

Alternate visions are one of those things that requires a lot of active imagination to envision.  Both IR vision and UV vision effectively let you see more "colors", so your world is more rich and beautiful than people without it, rather like the difference between regular human vision and someone who is color blind.

 

The real question is what does it mean in game terms?  If it doesn't buy you any advantage then you can chalk it up to special effect and not pay points for it beyond the ability to operate in the dark (per the Nightvision power).  But bringing out subtleties in different senses makes the game more fun.  As noted IR vision lets you see heat like a thermal imaging camera.  That is a nice way to view it since most people are at least somewhat familiar with those images.  

 

UV is less obvious, but it lets you discern details and characteristics you might otherwise miss.  Lots of proteins are active in the UV part of the spectrum which could help a character distinguish between say human blood and troll blood or whether that puddle is water or something less pleasant (be it urine, acid, or a slime monster).  It could also help identify species of plant (for spell components or healing herbs) and different types of minerals (whether that gemstone is fake or not).  It would not be fool-proof of course, but tossing out a few details to the character with the UV vision would add some flavor to the game.  For races that have UV vision, they may have inks designed so that only those with UV vision can read them which would be another bit of flavor for you.

[mhd]

Yes, that's part of what I'm looking for. If I get a good picture of what it's about, this doesn't just make it easier to describe what's going on, but also how to figure out perception roll penalties/bonuses or how to tie in additional abilities. This isn't just the "infrared/ultraviolet perception" part of the rules, but various degrees of nightvision, how discriminatory/analytical/tracking might be included, skill bonuses etc.

 

And as we're a rather visual species, at least some metaphors regarding our normal spectrum are always helpful. It's much easier to handwave smell for a wolfman than modify sight. The good thing is that we already had the opportunity to map the extended spectrum to our abilities with thermal imaging...

 

UV as some kind of (often non-utilitarian) enhanced perception is a rather nice idea and might explain a few things about some haughty elven aesthetics...

[Christopher]

The sense Powers in Hero have one of two purposes (in game terms):

Aquiring additional non-combat infomration

Aquiring additional combat information (especially being a targetting sense not affected by natural or power based darkness).

 

What is generall identified as "nightvision" (you know the greenly vision) is actually a form Infrared Vision.

Thermographic Vision is afaik a computer generated picture based on Infrared Vision.

 

As I understand it UV Vision makes a terrible nightvision (because there is exactly 0 UV light at night).

It does allow to see details the normal eye cannot see.

For example bees see in the UV-spectrum and thus see flowers differently (including seeing pattersn where we see one color).

Does it have any game effect worth the cost? Not certain. When in doubt asume it is freeby until it is prooven it has a (regular) game effect worth a cost.

 

Why is the infrared that good for nightvision? A bit of physics:

The shorter the wavelenght of Electromagnetic Impulses (be it radio, radar, visible light, x-ray, gamma or infrared) the more energy each impulse carries. It also means objects can shed more energy in that wavelenght area before they have to shed enery in higehr wavelenghts.

In order to get a lightbuld to produce light we have to force so much heat into it that it has to shed some of the energy in the visible spectrum. Even then it throws away 95% of the energy in the IR spectrum we cannot see. (if it glows it has more temperature then it can shed via just heat/IR)

 

In turn it means that anything warmer then absolute zero will shed at least some IR light. Until it reaches absolute Zero. And everything on earth is at least 200°C above absolute Zero, so there will always be IR lightsources to go around. But if it has not enough difference to the surroundings, we still cannot see it (vision works more on contrast then brightness).

[Cancer]

We mammals have rather poor color vision to begin with: one pigment got lost early in the mammal lineage and only two pigments exist for most mammals. In the Old World Monkey & Ape lineage "recently" one of those split (but still overlap significantly in sensitivity) and as part of that lineage we have a 3-dimensional color gamut, with remarkable wavelength discrimination power in the green where the recently-split pair are. You can represent a 3-d color gamut in terms of two differences, so the chromaticity diagram (google for that) can be successfully represented in a 2-d diagram.

 

If you add a UV pigment then you're talking about a 4-d color gamut, which means the equivalent of the chromaticity diagram would have to be a 3-d space. You might be able to wrap your head around that if you think about the task of representing taste in some kind of more-than-2-d representation, with e.g. sweet, salt, sour, bitter on different axes. But now you're getting really hard to envision (sorry).

 

But yeah, I'd expect the esthetics of color among other races with different color vision would be really wierd, especially if they "pay for" say UV vision by being unable to perceive some wavelength range in what we consider visible.

[Old Man]

IRL UV vision would provide an enhanced capability to determine what things are made of, since you'd be sampling a larger slice of the spectrum.  It'd also provide slightly better underwater visibility in daytime.  And it could provide a way to navigate in the dark undetected, since only you would be able to see the output from your UV flashlight.

 

In-game it'd probably not really be worth the cost unless there's something about the campaign that makes it so--like being able to distinguish between members of an alien bug species, for example.

 

Night vision (to go off on a tangent) works in a couple of different ways.  There are straight up infrared cameras, which provide a black and white image on a screen.  Then there are photomultipliers, which is how ze goggles usually work; with these, incoming photons hit a charged screen that fluoresces and emits more photons.  The resulting image is monochromatic.  Confusingly, photomultipliers pick up IR photons as well as UV, and at night, IR probably makes up most of the ambient photons flying around anyway.  So night vision winds up being IR by default.

[Tasha]

Actually Hero's "Nightvision" is 4 levels with Sight Perception as a power. Which is the penalty for seeing things at night. It is NOT thermographic vision That's what IR vision is for. It CAN be use for Light intensification (making everything brighter).

Old Man has it right!

[Christopher]

IRL UV vision would provide an enhanced capability to determine what things are made of, since you'd be sampling a larger slice of the spectrum.  It'd also provide slightly better underwater visibility in daytime.  And it could provide a way to navigate in the dark undetected, since only you would be able to see the output from your UV flashlight.

 

In-game it'd probably not really be worth the cost unless there's something about the campaign that makes it so--like being able to distinguish between members of an alien bug species, for example.

One Sci-Fi RPG I know actually has UV-Laser Pointer for Ranged Weaponry.

With assorted googles/genetic modification/cyberware/robot parts to see the UV-spectrum.

 

The only time UV-sight came up in any sort of Space Setting I know of was the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Especially the ones about Antilles Rougue Squadron, because they had a Gand Member and a Verpine Engineer (both able to see UV).

Know examples:

- When they got personal paintjobs on thier fighters to humans it appeared that the gands ship was completely white. But apparently there was a pattern in ultraviolet.

- The needed to procure a rather rare material and feared being scammed a bit. Aside from a complex laboratory testing (they could not take a laboratory along) the easiest way to detect the real deal was by looking at it with natural UV-vision. Apparently the real and the fake stuff looked differently to someone who always sees UV.

[kahuna's bro]

isn't this in the wrong forum?

it seems more like it belongs in the champions forum

[bigbywolfe]

isn't this in the wrong forum?

it seems more like it belongs in the champions forum

Both IR and UV vision naturally occurring in fantasy races (which I believe was mentioned in the OP). Why would a discussion specifically about fantasy raxe vision options belong in the Champions forum?

[lemming]

Take a look via google for "ir photos".   You'll get stuff like: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/01/11/40-incredible-near-infrared-photos/

 

Same thing with UV.   (Still need to convert one of my old digital cameras...)

[Tasha]

isn't this in the wrong forum?

it seems more like it belongs in the champions forum

In AD&D 1st and 2nd editions Non Human's darkvisions were described as being UV for the outdoor races like Elves, and IR vision for subterrainian races like Drow, and Dwarves. Fantasy Hero when it was published went forward with those descriptions for non human visions. Later Editions of FH and Hero would include their version of "Darkvision" for completeness. So nope this thread does belong there, though it could be transported into any of the other Genre Forums and fit right in.

[Tasha]

Take a look via google for "ir photos".   You'll get stuff like: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/01/11/40-incredible-near-infrared-photos/

 

Same thing with UV.   (Still need to convert one of my old digital cameras...)

Most people don't know that CCD's in Digital Cameras are normally sensative to light in the IR spectrum. This caused companies some embarassment when those capabilites were used to show people without their clothing. Now every CCD has an IR filter in place over the element. To prevent people from taking those kinds of images.

[lemming]

Most people don't know that CCD's in Digital Cameras are normally sensative to light in the IR spectrum. This caused companies some embarassment when those capabilites were used to show people without their clothing. Now every CCD has an IR filter in place over the element. To prevent people from taking those kinds of images.

Yep.  Hence the need to convert by taking the filter off.

[Cancer]

That near-IR sensitivity is voraciously used by the astronomers, to be sure; depending on chip architecture details, the peak QE is between 7000 - 8000 Angstroms (the canonical cutoff for human vision is 7000A, but just about everyone goes a little longward of that). Silicon's sensitivity is dying badly past 1 micron, though; it's turning transparent there.

[Zeropoint]

You think two vision modes are bad? What does it look like when a power armor character tries to mash visible band, IR, UV, thermographic, and millimeter wave radar all together into the same display?

 

I also have an amusing image in my head of a power armor character being in millimeter wave radar mode and walking into a glass wall because to him/her, it's totally invisible.

 

Edit: I just remembered one difference: in IR vision (my experience was with a thermal imager for firefighting), some visibly transparent materials are opaque. Acrylic plastic, AKA Plexiglass, looks silvery white and you sure can't see through it.