Darkvision corollaries

[Culture20]

This thread has me thinking; Dark Vision (+20% color) is physics breaking no matter what: it's allowing full visible light spectrum vision in complete darkness, where no visible light exists. Does this ability span to other vision types? i.e. is there a version of dark vision for Infravision, where no IR is radiating, or Ultravision, where no UV is? Or does Dark Vision cover these as well if the character also has them as vision types? If so, would they need to buy more +20% enhancements for each (e.g. to see the effects of UV reactive paint in absolute darkness)?

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Culture20

This thread has me thinking; Dark Vision (+20% color) is physics breaking no matter what: it's allowing full visible light spectrum vision in complete darkness, where no visible light exists. Does this ability span to other vision types? i.e. is there a version of dark vision for Infravision, where no IR is radiating, or Ultravision, where no UV is? Or does Dark Vision cover these as well if the character also has them as vision types? If so, would they need to buy more +20% enhancements for each (e.g. to see the effects of UV reactive paint in absolute darkness)?

It seems to me that what Dark Vision normally allows is seeing objects and their surfaces. I don't think it allows seeing visible light, because it operates when there is no visible light; and normally it doesn't allow seeing colors, which are reflective spectra of surfaces in relation to visible light.

So how would IR Dark Vision or UV Dark vision differ? You'd still be able to see surfaces of objects, because those same surfaces would reflect IR or UV, right? And it would operate under conditions where no IR or no UV was present. (If you could see thermal IR, you would not ordinarily be used "dark vision" in the first place.)

If you had Dark Vision with colors, it would let you detect the reflectance spectra of surfaces the same way you could if you had light to see by. So I think if you had IR Vision, or UV Vision, and IR or UV to see by, you would see some added colors; and Dark Vision would let you see those added colors as if you had IR or UV. But if you didn't have IR or UV Vision, it would seem silly to say that Dark Vision would suddenly let you see IR or UV colors. So I think you'd just buy Dark Vision and one of the other powers, and the color enhancement would apply to the IR or UV colors at no extra cost.