When and what should we expect to see in the next generation of thermal scopes? Didn’t Armasight have a 1280 scope at Shot? Is Pulsar doing a refresh soon? Thanks

The military is already using stuff way way way better than anything on the civilian market. Check out the Skeet IR we use to use them in Afgalhanistan and now they are available to civilians. Very small compact thermals with awesome clarity.

Sapper, I was talking Anthony about these. I'll looking for a higher end thermal right now also.

Too rich for my blood. Looking more in the $2k-$5k range.

Pulsar just refreshed by adding LRF to the trail line. Huge bonus.

The Skeet IR is a nifty little optic, but isn't next generation, but shrunken last generation (320x240) resolution. It is a nifty 1x optic, nicely miniaturized (will work well on helmets), but is nothing like what hh is talking about.

Adding the LRF to the trail is a nice feature upgrade, but not next generation either. Again, the cores are 384x288 and 640x320 (last gen and current gen for the civilian market at this time).

I think hh is wanting something like this, which isn't currently available to us commercially...


but it isn't going to be in the $2-5K range when it hits the market.

No sir, nothing for the consumer market above 640x480. Armasight was bought by FLIR in late 2016 and there will be (according to FLIR) no more thermals released under the Armasight name. The current Armasight thermals will remain until they are slowly phased out. While the Armasight Zeus's are still a nice optic, they are aging now and will be slowly phased out as the new FLIR ThermoSight Pro line replaces them. FLIR did not release a 640 core thermal this year so the the newest and latest high res thermals are the Pulsar Trail XP38 and XP50. The highest end thermals are still the Trijicons with their 12 micron BAE cores. Again, I'm speaking for the general consumer market, not the LEO or military market.

As for my suspicion, I keep hearing hushed murmurs of some higher than 640 cores but I really don't know if something that like is feasible any time soon or not? It seems like it would be but buddy it won't be cheap!

- Jason

yes it’s not next gen but is a very nice thermal in a very compact form. In the Stan I didn’t take advantage of the equipment like I should have lol. We had some really nice stuff.

I was accountable for 4 sets of these kits. I can’t remember the dollar amount but it was a lot lol. The long Range Thermal was out of this world.

http://www.ipkeys.com/portfolio-items/rcos/

FLIR was smart in buying Armasight. They were the one company relying on cores from FLIR and doing a better job of marketing what the civilian consumer wanted. FLIR blew with the RS line of scopes. I found it very telling when the ThermoSights came out and they look like Armasights (same housing, buttons, eye cup, etc., same core, of course, but with some subtle differences and firmware upgrades).

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The LRTV is a pretty nifty looking biocular. They are also in 320 resolution but also 640 resolution models and are cooled. Cooling requires a lot more battery power to operate.
http://www.optics1.com/pdf/LRTV%20(web).pdf

That thing ran through batteries lol. We also had some Crew serve weapons thermals that were pretty sweet. Can’t remember the brand or names. My favorite was the CROWS system. Was like playing a video game with a weapon mounted and you had a joystick to operate it from inside the vehicle. Had thermal, NV, or daytime video.

I agree. The new ThermoSight Pros are definitely just new guts in the old Armasight housing but that's ok, it's sturdy and looks good. The RS series were not very attractive.

It is good for the consumer that there are 3 only choices for thermal, Pulsar, FLIR and Trijicon. 4 choices, if you count ATN. I know that sometimes the mindset of "the more choices the better" but I spend 7+ hours a day talking to customers and too many choices is extremely overwhelming for people. Honestly, the thermal market is small compared to say, daytime rifle scopes. Before, I felt like the market was getting watered down and it was extremely difficult for consumers to make decisions on what to buy and Armasight had a ton of thermal models, honestly too many models, to chose from.

I'm really glad to see where Pulsar took the market in 2017 and I think FLIR is going to hit their stride in 2019 and we can have a good horse race between the two. I don't like to eliminate Trijicon from this discussion but they are just at a whole other price level and unless that changes, they are out of the reach of the average, every day consumer. And that's ok, it's nice to have a crème de la crème option at the top.

- Jason

Well stated Jason. I'm a Trijicon guy (3), though I own an Armasight and old school 640, 5X Thor (when ATM made good thermals). Various monoculars...

What I was going to add to the "too many choicest" discussion is that it doesn't help that Pulsar mixes so many letters and numbers into the names of their scopes. Just not necessary.

I agree. Their naming system leaves a whole lot to be desired. This isn't so much for you, because I'm sure you already know but I typed up this Pulsar naming system cheat sheet and posted it in a thread here a couple months ago. I'll post it again in case someone comes across this thread and maybe it will help someone.