What is each used for?
In: Physics
Thermal can pick up heat sources making it useful for targeting. In the context of a vehicle it can be used for blacked out night driving, the high contrast in the viewer makes it easy (if bumpy) to drive with whereas night vision would be too blurry between the road and sky and edges of the terrain. You can easily pick out the heat of a person or animal as it stands out against the background. Some systems have “red hot” overlays where temps over a certain amount show up as red on the black and white feed, making them instantly stand out. The downside is that things that are mostly the same temperature are basically just a blur. It depends on the use and model of thermal, some are better than others when it comes to looking at low temp variations.
Night vision is image illumination. The natural image strikes a plate inside the view tube and the same image, but brighter is displayed on the eye piece. It is better for on foot navigation as it picks up more obstacles and pitfalls clearly where thermal would see them all as a cool blur, so picking out very fine details is harder. Night vision can also see IR light sources (by picking the “near infrared” spectrum not the heat itself). So, a dark corner with no natural light can be illuminated with an IR flashlight and viewed through night vision. IR lasers also mean targeting to varying degrees of precision is possible.
Modern night vision-thermal fusion devices try to combine the qualities of both. They are like night vision devices, but with the overlays from thermals, causing high or low temps to be highlighted within the viewer.
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