Night Vision Equipment

[Flowergarden]

Hi, I have two questions regarding night vision equipment.
First, do my innate night vision stacks with night vision optics?
Second, what penalties would i get for using night vision monocle? I suppose I would get no depth of perception, but what if it's some ultra tech green glass goggles, size of normal goggles, with only colourblindness as a disadvantage. Do I get no depth of perception only in situations when my goggles helps? I suppose even in -9 darkness with naked eye i would see silhouette, supposedly, is it enough to remove no depth of perception?
Thanks

[The Colonel]

First natural night vision and NVG do not stack. An NVG image replaces your worldview rather than enhance it.

By night vision monocle, do you actually mean having NVG over one eye only or do you mean one of those sets of NVG with a single lense on the front? If the latter, then those are designed to adjust for depth of field and shouldn't be a problem. If the former, that sounds like a really bad idea, to the extent of ruining any night vision in the uncovered eye and giving you a migraine in short order unless you only use one eye at a time. I'm reminded of the monocle sight in the Apache, which allegedly filtered the hell out of potential users...

[Varyon]

From my understanding, most NVG function more like a camera than a pair of glasses, so you'd be limited to the night vision level of your gear (even if your natural night vision is better). However, I think a lot of the sights in HT would stack. First off, most telescopic sights (scopes) negate -1 worth of Darkness penalties, due to them collecting light, and I think that would stack with natural Night Vision. Improved visibility sights similarly negate -3 (which I feel is excessive, but whatever) worth of Darkness penalties. And collimating/reflex sights similarly negate -3. All of those should stack with Night Vision... but they only apply when Aiming, so not very good for looking around, and in fact the improved visibility, collimating, and reflex sights probably shouldn't apply at all to spotting targets (they just make it easier to determine where you're aiming once you already have).

[Flowergarden]

Thanks to everyone.

[Thökk]

However, I think a lot of the sights in HT would stack.

Depends on what is the source of night vision and what does it pick up. If it's supernatural I think it is going to stack with everything. If it's better cognitive processing of visual information it can maybe~ stack well with light intesification. If it does the same thing as equipment, there's only so much light you can perceive. If there is no additional information to reach your eyes you can't fill in the blanks (or rather you can, but you risk misinterpeting what you see).

Not sure if it checks out with the rules.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Varyon

However, I think a lot of the sights in HT would stack. First off, most telescopic sights (scopes) negate -1 worth of Darkness penalties, due to them collecting light, and I think that would stack with natural Night Vision.

That's an error in HT. A lot of telescopic sights do not have sufficient light gathering power to even match normal vision, and pretty much no sights have enough to exceed normal vision by a meaningful amount.

To avoid a dimming effect, the primary lens must have a minimum size of (size of distended pupil) * (magnification) -- that's why a lot of older binoculars have a lens size of 7mm * magnification, as 7mm is the typical size of pupils in low light. To get a bonus sufficient to grant a level of night vision, you want 15mm * magnification. This does not apply to point sources, a larger lens will always be useful when looking at stars, because this is really 'brightness per pixel/rod' -- that set of 10x50 binoculars is collecting 50x as much light as your eyes, but it's then spreading it over 100x the area, so the net effect is dimmer.