I frequently have hunters ask me about how well thermal can "see through" brush and tall grass. I found this video from a while back and thought it was a great illustration how thermal works in tall grass and brush. If this video would have been during the day I really think you would not have been able to see these pigs at all until they walked out between the brush. This grass was waist deep and thick, but the hogs were still easily detected.

I have noticed the same loss of the horizontal reticle on a FLIR RS Series 64, is this typical of Thermal Scopes. Is it true that the thin portion of the reticle is only 1 pixel thick.

And I know that it is only apparent in the video playback, when looking through the scope, the user still sees the horizontal reticle.

This happens across the board with ATN, FLIR, and other brands depending on reticle location. It's something that we have to deal with for the time being but not really an issue of concern. It would make sense the reticle is 1 pixel thick in some areas. In the outer portions of the reticle it's definitely thicker than 1 pixel and you never loose that part of the reticle completely in video playback.

I get the same question about how well thermal sees through things. I usually tell folks that thermal doesn't see through things, but that it sees the heat radiating from things. So the person isn't seeing into the grass as much as he is seeing what is broadcast out of the grass from the pigs. Blades of grass in the way will stop the broadcast, so what you see is what is the direct line of sight gaps in the grass between you and the hogs.

On the loss of the horizontal reticle on the video out thing, I have wondered if it is a sync issue between the scope and MDVR. I think most of us choose the highest resolution on the MDVR. I haven't had the opportunity to test it on lower resolutions. There is also a display type option that could affect this. It happens with all the scopes. The MDVR is the common element to the issue. Has anyone tried different settings?

2 things going on here... The thors used to display a missing horozontal or vertical reticle bar depending on the x/y coordinate. Then, it was fixed but the screen size was smaller when in video out mode. Then, that was fixed and it only showed the issue on video out and not on the display. Its the scopes, not the DVRs. This video was recorded with a Yukon MPR. The displays are not the same resolution as the sensor's video out so it comes out funky depending on reticle positions.

Really cool! Thanks for sharing!