Here is a video by Half as interesting that talks about the creation of digital camouflage and why the US’s army version sucks if anyone is interested.
The Dual Tex in the original post is mentioned in your video, but only in the barest passing.
The video seems like a very lacking overview of UCP. Even in its short runtime contains a least a few common mistakes, like identifying UCP as renamed Urban Track, and it doesn’t really talk about why the chosen colors were chosen. The chosen colors were a mistake, but an informative video about why a mistake was decided on is more productive that’s just pointing out the obvious.
This link is much better. It both identifies the flaws, and it illuminates the (admittedly mistaken) thought process behind the color choices of UCP.
My current view is that either the people running the tests only wanted a camo that blended perfectly into piles of gravel and old lady couches and absolutely nothing else, or they had legally blind people performing the tests. I strongly doubt this link will change my mind but I’ll give it a shot.
I don’t think you can actually hear the fundamental of the lowest note. It’s lowest note has a 16hz fundamental, and people can usually only hear down to around 60hz.
Near where I grew up there are these caves on a cliff side on the ocean. At the right time of day, the tide is such that the water rushes in and creates these amazing subsonic booms. You can’t hear them, but if you go down one of the walkways into the side of a cave, you can feel it. It’s crazy. Probably a similar thing.
Other commenter touched on one definition so I’ll explain the other.
Take a bunch of pictures of the woods, put them in a computer and have it tell you the most common colors to generate the a pattern of the most commonly found colors. Boom digital woodland camo.
Theoretically you’re using actual colors taken from a (or several) environments that you intend to be in. As opposed to a few colors picked by an artist because the artist thought they’d be the colors in those environments.
As for the squares I think it was just an easy way to formulate a pattern digitally. Plus it seemed futuristic at the time.
There is a link in the opening post with some background on Dual Tex.
It was an early attempt at having a pattern methodically designed to have macro and micro patterns, aka “dual textures” to help it work at closer and further ranges.
The squares were (on most iterations, some more primative tests had eyeballed patterns) derived from using a grid to create the pattern, with a grid being useful to help design a pattern with a good spread of colors.
Macro patterning is important to the military since observation and initial engagements usually occur in the multiple hundreds of meters, which is why US Woodland is derived from ERDL that has been greatly enlarged. If a pattern achieves good macro patterning, then micro patterning can help it work at closer ranges. Generally micro patterning is more useful in environments with lots of depth in them like jungles or woods, which is why patterns for those environments tend to be more complex than desert patterns.
Later digital patterns for uniforms that were created with computer assistance, like CADPAT used squares for the same reason of ease of design, and because it is easier to print patterns with distinct shapes rather than gradients. Multicam is an example of a pattern that is newer than CADPAT, which is using gradients.
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