7 ms·

WWI's 'Dazzle' Camouflage Seemed Effective Due to Unexpected Optical Trick

118 points by ilamont 2y ago

trhway 2y ago
it doesn't mention stereoscopic rangefinder used by surface Navy too. The Dazzle may have had effect here too. https://www.hagley.org/librarynews/razzle-dazzle-and-rangefinding-hitting-your-target-wwi https://www.hagley.org/librarynews/razzle-dazzle-and-rangefi...
sidewndr46 2y ago
I've looked for an academic explanation of this "horizon effect" but can't find anything. Most things I find seem to be related to AI somehow.
- db48x 2y ago
  https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20416695241312316 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20416695241312316
rx_tx 2y ago
H.I. Sutton did a great video [1] about it that also explains how it was beneficial due to the way enemy submarines had to estimate speed and heading and could get fooled. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw7vq_YD6JM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw7vq_YD6JM
- Syonyk 2y ago
  When you're trying to hit something moving 20kt, with something moving 30-35kt, from a few thousand yards, it doesn't take much error in estimating speed, heading, or distance, to make them miss. It's honestly more remarkable that they hit at all in those conditions, even with a "spread" (shooting several along slightly different headings hoping one or two will hit).
  - jaggederest 2y ago
    Well, at least in WW2 they had mechanical computers that could use the input width of the vessel and the class to estimate the range, heading, and firing angle to set the torpedoes up. There's a good series of youtube videos by a sim player that teaches how to use the TDC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANk6hZCcVRw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANk6hZCcVRw - it's very in depth, and demonstrates how much effort it takes to get a firing solution, as you say.
    - leoc 2y ago
      The worst thing is that the TDC's calculation is very much GIGO if you get the Angle On Bow input wrong, and that's the hardest thing to get right.
  - veunes 2y ago
    Even with a spread, you're really just narrowing the odds, not guaranteeing a hit
    - cratermoon 2y ago
      Adding to the difficulty is the possibility of observers seeing the incoming torpedoes and a fast-moving, maneuverable ship dodging them. Fast and maneuverable as in .. the USS New Jersey, able to sidestep a spread of five torpedoes from a Japanese destroyer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_destroyer_Maikaze#Construction_and_career https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_destroyer_Maikaze#Con...
  - leoc 2y ago
    Anyone with a copy of Silent Hunter 3 https://store.steampowered.com/app/15210/Silent_Hunter_III/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/15210/Silent_Hunter_III/ can experience this for themselves. Trying to estimate another ship's heading from a vantage point near sea level is maddening, even with the aid of a little recognition book which shows ships of that class at various relative headings, and as TFA says it's especially hard to tell the difference between perpendicular and near-perpendicular relative headings. Mind you, this also explains why dazzle was a promising idea in the first place. Calculating Angle On Bow was already the hard part of ship-against-ship targeting, why not try to make it even harder?
jessriedel 2y ago
I don't really get how the horizon effect is something that could be confused/conflated with the effect of dazzle camouflage. The horizon effect is described as a predictable bias in angle estimation, relative to the true angle, when a ship is viewed such that it's near the horizon. This presumably always applies to the view from a periscope, so it would be ever present in any remotely reasonable test of dazzle camouflage (whether to a neutral control or to conventional camouflage patterns). They just say that Blodgett’s control was "too vague to be useful", but it would have to be a truly terrible control to lead to the suggested confusion, e.g., comparing dazzle camouflage through a periscope to conventional camouflage viewed from above.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- veunes 2y ago
  But I think the researchers' point is more about how Blodgett may not have accounted for how much that effect was influencing perception
- alexey-salmin 2y ago
  I had the exact same question and I think the news article didn't do a good job to answer it. But the paper does claim that his control was terrible, even though not clear why because he didn't seem to document it properly. > After addressing problems with Blodgett's analysis and control experiment, we found results indicating a twist of only about 7°, but a much larger “hysteresis” effect (∼19–23°) where perceived direction was drawn to the horizon regardless of dazzle. This effect combined both constructively and destructively with “twist”, depending on the direction of the target ship. Then specifically this part is very suspicious, zero error is unlikely in any circumstance: > A uniform white and black background were assumed to produce zero errors. In the case of white, Blodgett (1919) claimed this was borne out by experiment, though no details (e.g., number of trials or observers) were provided. Furthermore, there is no evidence (or even a suggestion) that the black condition was run. > Results were also reported for ships painted uniform black and uniform grey (e.g., see Table 2 in S2). These conditions were not mentioned by Blodgett until his results, and it is not clear under what seascape and weather conditions these controls were run, how many trials were performed, what the true directions were, or which or how many participants took part. In fact, there is nothing in Blodgett's report to suggest that these conditions were performed by any of the six participants mentioned above.
ggm 2y ago
Diagrams would really have helped comprehension.
web007 2y ago
Look up "CV dazzle" for the equivalent in the modern age, makeup effects to avoid facial detection / recognition.
- NackerHughes 2y ago
  I remember that when it first came out. I get it’s a theoretical or fashion type thing, but the concept seemed flagrantly absurd to me. Block automated facial recognition in a way that in turn makes your face instantly recognisable in any crowd…
  - genewitch 2y ago
    A hat with infrared LEDs aimed out, such that there was a torus of light around your face. Invisible to humans (generally), only visible to cameras. It won't "work right" on cameras that have permanent IR filters. Maybe. I haven't tested this in years. I have a feeling that IR of the correct strength and frequency would be dimly visible to humans, though. Similar to cameras with monochrome night vision via IR LED.
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      That would only maybe work for automated tracking; if someone wants to get the image of your face, they should be able to do it in post, unless the recording quality is shitty - the tiny variations in brightness might contain just enough information to reconstruct the face shape with a little filtering. (Now I wonder, how narrow-band such IR LED is, and if it could be made to emit a single frequency so sharp, it would create funny diffraction patterns off cameras' surfaces and lens imperfections, clobbering the high-frequency components of the image...)
    - bsenftner 2y ago
      One only needs 1 or two LEDs near their face, but they need to be blinking in short irregular intervals. Cameras have mechanical controls for controlling focus and the amount of light they capture, and that can be attacked with these irregular blinky LEDs that cause the camera to try to adjust to the bright illumination from the LED, but then it is gone before the adjustment is complete, but then it is on again, then off again. The result is a person that never is more than a grey silhouette. I worked in enterprise FR, on one of the globally leading systems, as the lead developer. That scenario defeats pretty much all FR when from a single camera. It can be mitigated with multiple camera views, which few FR systems are setup for multiple quality views at every key location.
jabl 2y ago
It's impossible to conclusively say whether dazzle worked or not, due to the large number of confounding variables. One study, which I unfortunately forget where I read it, came to the tentative conclusion that it was probably mostly a wash. Yes, dazzle helped somewhat and there was as a result a slightly lower percentage of successful attacks (that is, more torpedoes that missed their target), but OTOH due to being easier to spot in the first place the dazzle painted ships also invited more attacks.
- veunes 2y ago
  Still, it's fascinating how much effort went into visual deception before radar and sonar changed the game entirely
- aaron695 2y ago
  [dead]
- noworld 2y ago
  It worked on me. I have yet to sink a single merchant ship in WW1.
- me_me_me 2y ago
  [dead]
IshKebab 2y ago
Terrible article. What effect did the dazzle have? Doesn't say.
- simonh 2y ago
  It's a summary of the research and theories. If those are inconclusive, what exactly do you expect the author to do about it?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- veunes 2y ago
  It's definitely not the clearest write-up but I cannot say that it's terrible...
- db48x 2y ago
  https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20416695241312316 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20416695241312316
  - IshKebab 2y ago
    Ah ok: > we found results indicating a twist [due to dazzle] of only about 7°, but a much larger “hysteresis” effect (∼19–23°) where perceived direction was drawn to the horizon regardless of dazzle. This effect combined both constructively and destructively with “twist”, depending on the direction of the target ship. Could have just said that...
- diggan 2y ago
  It's in the first paragraph? At least the effect they were looking for: > Unlike traditional camouflage, which helps objects blend into their surroundings, dazzle camouflage used stark geometric patterns to try to confuse German U-boat captains’ perception of a ship’s direction and speed, making it harder to target.
  - IshKebab 2y ago
imcritic 2y ago
The site is not loading because it is infected with CloudFlare.
- immibis 2y ago
  Don't know why this is downvoted. If it's acceptable to point out that a link is paywalled or hugged to death, it should also be acceptable to point out that it's unsolvable-captcha-walled or only lets certain browser fingerprints through.
  - glenstein 2y ago
    I think there's a sympathetic prevailing sentiment as it relates to paywalls. I don't know that Cloudfare is regarded as unnecessary or negatively (though I'm certainly open to that argument!).
    - immibis 2y ago
      People who use Cloudflare typically don't even have concrete reasons why they are using Cloudflare. Some do, but the typical one doesn't.
retSava 2y ago
See also the "Berlin Brigade" urban camo: https://www.reddit.com/r/camouflage/comments/10qw7o9/urban_camouflage_pattern_1980s_uk_berlin_brigade/ https://www.reddit.com/r/camouflage/comments/10qw7o9/urban_c... One of my favorites. Haven't found much to read about it, so don't know how effective it was, or why it's not used more.
- ionwake 2y ago
  my new fav camo after the sukhoi blue . nice. thx for sharing.
- dingaling 2y ago
  It was very effective in the specific combination of urban landscape and shadows of Berlin. However the Brigade were only expected to fight there until being overrun by the NVA* ( East German Army ) so they didn't need to consider the camouflage's performance in rural areas. All modern multi-terrain camouflage does incorporate some aspects of the Berlin pattern, particularly contrasting shadow. * The NVA's commitment to wider WarPac strategy was questionable so the Brigade was intended to inflict both physical and philosophical damage upon them whilst fighting for their capital; once that objective was seized, it was hoped that the NVA would show little further interest in pushing westward. This was intended to reinforce the forecast reluctance of Czechoslovak and Polish forces and lead to the isolation of Soviet forces.
- upofadown 2y ago
  Back in the day, it was considered prudent to repaint your pirate satellite TV to make it look less obvious. Knowing about the dazzle idea, I did bright white and dark black in rectangular blocks to break up the shape of the dish. After I was done and the dish was on the roof I realized I had reinvented a fairly conventional urban camo scheme. It was the same as used on the pictured tanks. Afterwards I realized the weaknesses of such a scheme. Against an actual urban background it was quite effective in preventing perception of the oval shape of a satellite dish. Backlit by a bright sky, not so much. The oval shadow cast by the dish in sunlight was also quite easy to detect.
veunes 2y ago
How many other accepted wartime "innovations" might have been misattributed
darkerside 2y ago
I'm not against sharing nuance, but it's annoying when past is discounted through pedantry. Dazzle was effective, and article is mostly clickbait, albeit interesting.
MisterTea 2y ago
The fun part about this article is I did not know the term "razzle dazzle" came from this kind of camo. As in: "I gave em the ol razzle dazzle" meaning "I was able to escape being pursued." Even the first comment below mention the "old razzle dazzle." Fun term.
ahartmetz 2y ago
The connection between camouflage and then-current art styles is also interesting. Dazzle camouflage seems quite related to expressionism (which I know mostly from film, where it's stark and unsettling like the camouflage), and the still-current pixel camo is related to, well, "computers are cool" and pixel art.
- daniel_reetz 2y ago
  Strange take. Pixelated camouflage is and was an attempt to make a scale invariant camouflage (works at near and far distances) by encoding patterns at multiple spatial frequencies. It's far from "computers are cool" or pixel art.
  - ahartmetz 2y ago
    There are always reasons (rationalizations) why it had to be exactly like that. Like so many acronyms that are really backronyms. Or, if you are familiar with IT, why a certain technology is "needed" in a product. I'm not saying that these camo patterns don't work, but the particulars (e.g. why it had to be rectangular pixels, not hexagons or nature-inspired fractals) are often connected to fashions. My personal opinion is that dazzle camo looks cool, by the way ;)
    - aardvarkr 2y ago
      Camo has been and continues to be very well studied. It’s actually incredible how well the pixel camo works compared to everything else. If there were anything better they would be using it
  - kjkjadksj 2y ago
    Conceivably this would be done better with more resolution and pixelated patterns are also not found in nature. Keep in mind this rolled out in an era where army recruiting was investing heavily in video games and other favorable media in effort to connect with a new generation of youth. High tech seeming uniforms are also for the morale of the soldier as much as they are for function.
jboggan 2y ago
The last photo in the article is of my great uncle's [0] ship, the Olympic [1], sister ship to the Titanic. It's interesting to read about since he was knighted after the war for captaining her and ramming a U-boat [2] that was trying to sink her during a troop transport mission across the Atlantic. 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertram_Fox_Hayes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertram_Fox_Hayes 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Olympic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Olympic 2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM_U-103 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM_U-103
janevenety24 2y ago
[dead]

118 points by ilamont 2y ago

it doesn't mention stereoscopic rangefinder used by surface Navy too. The Dazzle may have had effect here too. https://www.hagley.org/librarynews/razzle-dazzle-and-rangefinding-hitting-your-target-wwi https://www.hagley.org/librarynews/razzle-dazzle-and-rangefi...

sidewndr46 2y ago

I've looked for an academic explanation of this "horizon effect" but can't find anything. Most things I find seem to be related to AI somehow.

db48x 2y ago
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20416695241312316 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20416695241312316

rx_tx 2y ago

H.I. Sutton did a great video [1] about it that also explains how it was beneficial due to the way enemy submarines had to estimate speed and heading and could get fooled. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw7vq_YD6JM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw7vq_YD6JM

Syonyk 2y ago
When you're trying to hit something moving 20kt, with something moving 30-35kt, from a few thousand yards, it doesn't take much error in estimating speed, heading, or distance, to make them miss. It's honestly more remarkable that they hit at all in those conditions, even with a "spread" (shooting several along slightly different headings hoping one or two will hit).
- jaggederest 2y ago
  Well, at least in WW2 they had mechanical computers that could use the input width of the vessel and the class to estimate the range, heading, and firing angle to set the torpedoes up. There's a good series of youtube videos by a sim player that teaches how to use the TDC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANk6hZCcVRw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANk6hZCcVRw - it's very in depth, and demonstrates how much effort it takes to get a firing solution, as you say.
  - leoc 2y ago
    The worst thing is that the TDC's calculation is very much GIGO if you get the Angle On Bow input wrong, and that's the hardest thing to get right.
- veunes 2y ago
  Even with a spread, you're really just narrowing the odds, not guaranteeing a hit
  - cratermoon 2y ago
    Adding to the difficulty is the possibility of observers seeing the incoming torpedoes and a fast-moving, maneuverable ship dodging them. Fast and maneuverable as in .. the USS New Jersey, able to sidestep a spread of five torpedoes from a Japanese destroyer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_destroyer_Maikaze#Construction_and_career https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_destroyer_Maikaze#Con...
- leoc 2y ago
  Anyone with a copy of Silent Hunter 3 https://store.steampowered.com/app/15210/Silent_Hunter_III/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/15210/Silent_Hunter_III/ can experience this for themselves. Trying to estimate another ship's heading from a vantage point near sea level is maddening, even with the aid of a little recognition book which shows ships of that class at various relative headings, and as TFA says it's especially hard to tell the difference between perpendicular and near-perpendicular relative headings. Mind you, this also explains why dazzle was a promising idea in the first place. Calculating Angle On Bow was already the hard part of ship-against-ship targeting, why not try to make it even harder?

jessriedel 2y ago

I don't really get how the horizon effect is something that could be confused/conflated with the effect of dazzle camouflage. The horizon effect is described as a predictable bias in angle estimation, relative to the true angle, when a ship is viewed such that it's near the horizon. This presumably always applies to the view from a periscope, so it would be ever present in any remotely reasonable test of dazzle camouflage (whether to a neutral control or to conventional camouflage patterns). They just say that Blodgett’s control was "too vague to be useful", but it would have to be a truly terrible control to lead to the suggested confusion, e.g., comparing dazzle camouflage through a periscope to conventional camouflage viewed from above.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
veunes 2y ago
But I think the researchers' point is more about how Blodgett may not have accounted for how much that effect was influencing perception
alexey-salmin 2y ago
I had the exact same question and I think the news article didn't do a good job to answer it. But the paper does claim that his control was terrible, even though not clear why because he didn't seem to document it properly. > After addressing problems with Blodgett's analysis and control experiment, we found results indicating a twist of only about 7°, but a much larger “hysteresis” effect (∼19–23°) where perceived direction was drawn to the horizon regardless of dazzle. This effect combined both constructively and destructively with “twist”, depending on the direction of the target ship. Then specifically this part is very suspicious, zero error is unlikely in any circumstance: > A uniform white and black background were assumed to produce zero errors. In the case of white, Blodgett (1919) claimed this was borne out by experiment, though no details (e.g., number of trials or observers) were provided. Furthermore, there is no evidence (or even a suggestion) that the black condition was run. > Results were also reported for ships painted uniform black and uniform grey (e.g., see Table 2 in S2). These conditions were not mentioned by Blodgett until his results, and it is not clear under what seascape and weather conditions these controls were run, how many trials were performed, what the true directions were, or which or how many participants took part. In fact, there is nothing in Blodgett's report to suggest that these conditions were performed by any of the six participants mentioned above.

ggm 2y ago

Diagrams would really have helped comprehension.

web007 2y ago

Look up "CV dazzle" for the equivalent in the modern age, makeup effects to avoid facial detection / recognition.

NackerHughes 2y ago
I remember that when it first came out. I get it’s a theoretical or fashion type thing, but the concept seemed flagrantly absurd to me. Block automated facial recognition in a way that in turn makes your face instantly recognisable in any crowd…
- genewitch 2y ago
  A hat with infrared LEDs aimed out, such that there was a torus of light around your face. Invisible to humans (generally), only visible to cameras. It won't "work right" on cameras that have permanent IR filters. Maybe. I haven't tested this in years. I have a feeling that IR of the correct strength and frequency would be dimly visible to humans, though. Similar to cameras with monochrome night vision via IR LED.
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    That would only maybe work for automated tracking; if someone wants to get the image of your face, they should be able to do it in post, unless the recording quality is shitty - the tiny variations in brightness might contain just enough information to reconstruct the face shape with a little filtering. (Now I wonder, how narrow-band such IR LED is, and if it could be made to emit a single frequency so sharp, it would create funny diffraction patterns off cameras' surfaces and lens imperfections, clobbering the high-frequency components of the image...)
  - bsenftner 2y ago
    One only needs 1 or two LEDs near their face, but they need to be blinking in short irregular intervals. Cameras have mechanical controls for controlling focus and the amount of light they capture, and that can be attacked with these irregular blinky LEDs that cause the camera to try to adjust to the bright illumination from the LED, but then it is gone before the adjustment is complete, but then it is on again, then off again. The result is a person that never is more than a grey silhouette. I worked in enterprise FR, on one of the globally leading systems, as the lead developer. That scenario defeats pretty much all FR when from a single camera. It can be mitigated with multiple camera views, which few FR systems are setup for multiple quality views at every key location.

jabl 2y ago

It's impossible to conclusively say whether dazzle worked or not, due to the large number of confounding variables. One study, which I unfortunately forget where I read it, came to the tentative conclusion that it was probably mostly a wash. Yes, dazzle helped somewhat and there was as a result a slightly lower percentage of successful attacks (that is, more torpedoes that missed their target), but OTOH due to being easier to spot in the first place the dazzle painted ships also invited more attacks.

veunes 2y ago
Still, it's fascinating how much effort went into visual deception before radar and sonar changed the game entirely
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]
noworld 2y ago
It worked on me. I have yet to sink a single merchant ship in WW1.
me_me_me 2y ago
[dead]

IshKebab 2y ago

Terrible article. What effect did the dazzle have? Doesn't say.

simonh 2y ago
It's a summary of the research and theories. If those are inconclusive, what exactly do you expect the author to do about it?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
veunes 2y ago
It's definitely not the clearest write-up but I cannot say that it's terrible...
db48x 2y ago
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20416695241312316 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20416695241312316
- IshKebab 2y ago
  Ah ok: > we found results indicating a twist [due to dazzle] of only about 7°, but a much larger “hysteresis” effect (∼19–23°) where perceived direction was drawn to the horizon regardless of dazzle. This effect combined both constructively and destructively with “twist”, depending on the direction of the target ship. Could have just said that...
diggan 2y ago
It's in the first paragraph? At least the effect they were looking for: > Unlike traditional camouflage, which helps objects blend into their surroundings, dazzle camouflage used stark geometric patterns to try to confuse German U-boat captains’ perception of a ship’s direction and speed, making it harder to target.
- IshKebab 2y ago

imcritic 2y ago

The site is not loading because it is infected with CloudFlare.

immibis 2y ago
Don't know why this is downvoted. If it's acceptable to point out that a link is paywalled or hugged to death, it should also be acceptable to point out that it's unsolvable-captcha-walled or only lets certain browser fingerprints through.
- glenstein 2y ago
  I think there's a sympathetic prevailing sentiment as it relates to paywalls. I don't know that Cloudfare is regarded as unnecessary or negatively (though I'm certainly open to that argument!).
  - immibis 2y ago
    People who use Cloudflare typically don't even have concrete reasons why they are using Cloudflare. Some do, but the typical one doesn't.

retSava 2y ago

See also the "Berlin Brigade" urban camo: https://www.reddit.com/r/camouflage/comments/10qw7o9/urban_camouflage_pattern_1980s_uk_berlin_brigade/ https://www.reddit.com/r/camouflage/comments/10qw7o9/urban_c... One of my favorites. Haven't found much to read about it, so don't know how effective it was, or why it's not used more.

ionwake 2y ago
my new fav camo after the sukhoi blue . nice. thx for sharing.
dingaling 2y ago
It was very effective in the specific combination of urban landscape and shadows of Berlin. However the Brigade were only expected to fight there until being overrun by the NVA* ( East German Army ) so they didn't need to consider the camouflage's performance in rural areas. All modern multi-terrain camouflage does incorporate some aspects of the Berlin pattern, particularly contrasting shadow. * The NVA's commitment to wider WarPac strategy was questionable so the Brigade was intended to inflict both physical and philosophical damage upon them whilst fighting for their capital; once that objective was seized, it was hoped that the NVA would show little further interest in pushing westward. This was intended to reinforce the forecast reluctance of Czechoslovak and Polish forces and lead to the isolation of Soviet forces.
upofadown 2y ago
Back in the day, it was considered prudent to repaint your pirate satellite TV to make it look less obvious. Knowing about the dazzle idea, I did bright white and dark black in rectangular blocks to break up the shape of the dish. After I was done and the dish was on the roof I realized I had reinvented a fairly conventional urban camo scheme. It was the same as used on the pictured tanks. Afterwards I realized the weaknesses of such a scheme. Against an actual urban background it was quite effective in preventing perception of the oval shape of a satellite dish. Backlit by a bright sky, not so much. The oval shadow cast by the dish in sunlight was also quite easy to detect.

veunes 2y ago

How many other accepted wartime "innovations" might have been misattributed

darkerside 2y ago

I'm not against sharing nuance, but it's annoying when past is discounted through pedantry. Dazzle was effective, and article is mostly clickbait, albeit interesting.

MisterTea 2y ago

The fun part about this article is I did not know the term "razzle dazzle" came from this kind of camo. As in: "I gave em the ol razzle dazzle" meaning "I was able to escape being pursued." Even the first comment below mention the "old razzle dazzle." Fun term.

ahartmetz 2y ago

The connection between camouflage and then-current art styles is also interesting. Dazzle camouflage seems quite related to expressionism (which I know mostly from film, where it's stark and unsettling like the camouflage), and the still-current pixel camo is related to, well, "computers are cool" and pixel art.

daniel_reetz 2y ago
Strange take. Pixelated camouflage is and was an attempt to make a scale invariant camouflage (works at near and far distances) by encoding patterns at multiple spatial frequencies. It's far from "computers are cool" or pixel art.
- ahartmetz 2y ago
  There are always reasons (rationalizations) why it had to be exactly like that. Like so many acronyms that are really backronyms. Or, if you are familiar with IT, why a certain technology is "needed" in a product. I'm not saying that these camo patterns don't work, but the particulars (e.g. why it had to be rectangular pixels, not hexagons or nature-inspired fractals) are often connected to fashions. My personal opinion is that dazzle camo looks cool, by the way ;)
  - aardvarkr 2y ago
    Camo has been and continues to be very well studied. It’s actually incredible how well the pixel camo works compared to everything else. If there were anything better they would be using it
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  Conceivably this would be done better with more resolution and pixelated patterns are also not found in nature. Keep in mind this rolled out in an era where army recruiting was investing heavily in video games and other favorable media in effort to connect with a new generation of youth. High tech seeming uniforms are also for the morale of the soldier as much as they are for function.

jboggan 2y ago

The last photo in the article is of my great uncle's [0] ship, the Olympic [1], sister ship to the Titanic. It's interesting to read about since he was knighted after the war for captaining her and ramming a U-boat [2] that was trying to sink her during a troop transport mission across the Atlantic. 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertram_Fox_Hayes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertram_Fox_Hayes 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Olympic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Olympic 2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM_U-103 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM_U-103

janevenety24 2y ago

[dead]