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  • Author Author: tariq.ahmad
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How CoD Modern Warfare 2 Night Vision Goggles Work -- The Electronics Inside 69

When Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 2 was released in 2009, you could preorder with limited edition "Night Vision Goggles". What were they? Did they work? How did they work? Let take some apart to find out!

Watch the Video:

Bonus Content:

  • in reply to kmikemoo

    I'm told that modern ones are exponentially better - but I have never laid my hands on a set on "light amplification" ones to know for sure!

    Your welcome!

  • Very cool!  Thank you for doing the bonus video because I was definitely curious as to how you modified the web cam.  I used some of the Army's night vision goggles back in the early 80's - so my expectation of night vision is absolutely green.  Anything else would just not be real. RoflThumbsup  I have no idea what the modern ones are like.  I just remember that there was no depth perception and even a tiny bit of real light was blinding.

  • in reply to a531016

    Yes, they had no illumination.

    They worked fairly well, but had very low resolution and were quite expensive at the time.

    FYI, I just bought a Chinese Melexis GigaDevice IR thermal camera.

    It is pretty basic, but at under 100 USD from Walmart, it is an interesting device.

    I have not played with it much, but it provided a nice picture of the dog in a dark room.

  • in reply to DAB

    As alwyas, thank you DAB!

    That's an interesting application, I assume the goggles for spotting the lasers had no IR illumination of their own?

    Wow - I assume that they were IP69 or something completely pressure rated? It'd be facinating to learn more about those!

    I have to admit, I shied a little away from the topic of cameras that automatically switch - like CCTV cameras. I assume that newer versions use software filtering to switch between a colour image and an IR mono image, but I'm not 100%?

  • Great teardown.

    I first ran into a night vision device in the early 1970's when we used them in the laser lab to track the IR laser beams.

    Those were the old analog devices, though we did have an image dissector that, could see up to 1.2 microns. Standard silicon range.

    My dad said that he used some of the early IR devices in WWII, he was in the underwater demolition team units that would train at night.

    There are a number of digital cameras that you can buy without the IR blocking filter and they see IR just fine.

    In fact I have an old Sony camcorder, circa 2000, that you can flip the IR filter in and out and it has a big IR illuminator built in for night recording.