FLIR gone?

Hearing rumors that FLIR is no longer on the consumer market for optics. This true?

I hope to heck not, I have a PTS233.

Same here and unfortunate

Yep, GONE is the word. They will still be doing warranty work, but not making any new consumer end scopes, apparently. We now own dinosaurs.

What will be telling is what, if anything, they have at Shot Show.

Link to this announcement?

Charlie

It's been in the works for a long time. FLIR does not support the hunting community and don't want to be involved in it.

I heard they had a booth at DSC on Thursday and then on Friday POOF they were gone

interesting
explains perhaps why they wouldn't let me buy the PTS233 I had on demo for a year and a half..
killed a lot of pigs with it

This has been coming on for a year. Several dealers quite carrying them due to a questionable future.

Well that stinks. I did have issues with both the FLIRs I purchased. First one took unnecessarily long to get back from warranty. Quite the headache. The second came back quick. I traded one in for a Pulsar as I like higher magnification for my style of hunting and liked the looks of the Thermion more.

Love the heck out of my PTS736. Like it slightly more than the Pulsar Thermion. I kind of regretted getting the Pulsar Thermion over another 736, but knowing their consumer division is going away... glad I didn't go with another FLIR.

I guess the message here is hunters are a pain in the azz to work with.

I still would like to pick up a Breach at some point, given it's size and performance, mainly the size for use on a helmet.

Once the warranty ends on any of this stuff, I would assume repair is more expensive than replace anyway, so I really don't see a downside other than not being an option "new" any longer.

You guys that have the FLIR products, have you had any issues with something you've had longer than say 6 months?

Charlie

Well, no doubt this has been coming for a while, at least in terms of their weapon sights. As best as I can tell, they really messed up with their initial introduction of the RS series (rubber coated square box) line of rifle scopes that were not a hit with the consumer market (circa 2014). The RS scopes were for the consumer market. As I recall, these were FLIR's first sub $10K scopes, the rest being military or military intended scopes that trickled into the civilian market that ranged in price around $12-20K for the ones I was seeing. FLIR was attempting to compete with ATN that was still making a good thermal scope at the time and Armasight, the latter doing a lot of sales and using FLIR Tau 1 cores. IR Defense had just previously come out with their 320 resolution IR Hunter and within months of working out some bugs had a 640 resolution version that was pricey, but gaining in popularity.

Somewhere in here Armasight changed over to the FLIR Tau 2 cores and got an upgraded and more complicated firmware package that allowed users not to adjust the image by brightness and contrast, but by 3 other variables. It was somewhat ridiculous. Most users don't fully understand the extra adjustments and hence don't even mess with them.

Pulsar entered the picture with weapon sights and the civilian consumer market was getting really interesting. I actually got the first US hog kills with a prototype Apex 384 resolution scope in 2015 thanks to Pig_Popper who was my contact at Pulsar at the time. The Apex line of scopes were downright inexpensive and functioned well. I think they were $3900 or $3500 and the were of a quality that seemed to be punching well above their class.

IR Defense was bought out by Trijicon.

The RS line continued to flounder for years and then FLIR had this great idea of buying Armasight in 2016 for $41 million. Armasight had just had their own fiasco product launch with their pathetic Zeus Pro line of high dollar scopes that were apparently supposed to compete with IR Defense/Trijicon scopes, but were too big, used too many batteries, and had a crappy image much of the time. So Armasight was ripe for the picking. FLIR kept on Armasight employees for a couple of years, still making the Zeus and Predator line of weapon sights along with other Armasight offerings (but not the Zeus Pro, IIRC), upgrading and further complicating the firmware along the way and then giving birth to the new PTS line of weapon sights for the consumer market, only in 320 resolution, but with a 12 micron core that was an improvement over the 17 micron core. Two key players FLIR got rid of or lost were the Tarakanov brothers who had been with ATN, then moved to Armasight. This was a large part of the creative genius behind both lines of scopes and their loss from FLIR was not a good thing, but then again, the new PTS line of scopes were nothing particularly new or interesting. They were just an upgraded version of the original Armasight Zeus models with bigger lenses, more magnification, and unnecessarily complicated firmware. There were promises of a 640 resolution 12 micron core to come soon. This was to compete with the Trijicon scopes that were already running 640 resolution 12 micron BAE cores that were better than the FLIR's Tau 2 640 17 micron cores. Well apparently, FLIR had troubles making the 640 12 micron cores work properly. Pulsar had upgraded to also having 640 resolution scopes along the way, but ULIS (maker of the core) was not able to turn out a 12 micron version either. On top of that, ATN had moved a lot of their sourcing to China and had a new line of Thor scopes that had a bunch of features and were much less expensive overall. To compound matters, FLIR's PTS line of scopes was not hugely successful. It was doing okay, but doomed to die without having a 640 resolution version. Never mind that N-Vision also entered the market with BAE cores that were kicking butt on anything FLIR could put out.

So in terms of weapon sights, FLIR was getting beat on pricing and market acceptance of their products.

Very informative DNS! Thanks for sharing.

Interesting to hear of the problems with 12 micron non-BAE cores running at 640 resolution. Didn't realize that was a reason why there are few 640 12 micron scopes available to consumers.

Charlie - I run my FLIR PTS736 the most out of my 3 thermals. I have had zero issues since receiving the replacement. I use it several times a month since I got it in May 2019.

It's been confirmed. No more FLIR scope sales to the civilian market. The OTS group is pretty much shut down. They will continue to sell some handhelds for the foreseeable future though. Breach, Scout, Scion, etc. They will continue to service existing units though.

Yeah, I've been waiting on a reply from OTS to my email since I first heard about this. I was issued a case number and it said someone will contact me shortly. Welllll, maybe not. I just hope my PTS233 lasts as long as I do. Don't see anyway to come up with another thermal.

They claim they will continue to support it. Are you having problems with it now?

man, if you can swing it, the Nvision stuff is insanely good

Never had problem one, it has and still works great. I just wanted to check with them to see if they would still service it. I have actually been wanting to upgrade for several months for some longer range shots. I have been looking at the new models trying to find one in my price range. N-vision looks top notch but way out of my range.

Yes it is. Hands down best thermals I've owned personally.

Any idea if NVISION is revising their lineup this year? I am looking at one but don't want to do it now if they're rolling out a whole new line at the Shot Show...

All, or some, will be made clear come Shot Show.

This is the answer; Myron is dead on. I got a call from FLIR today and was told exactly what Myron said above. I've seen some end users online trying to argue something different but I was told by FLIR that this is the "official" statement, although there has been no real official statement. This appears to be the final answer.

Jason

OTS has pulled out of Shot and cancelled all meetings. FLIR Systems will be there (the Government side, etc).

I'm sure whoever is working that booth will not have a very pleasant time though!

Our FLIR rep will be there and I'll be meeting with him. Will report back with any other interesting news.




Thanks brother. I haven't heard anything further since you and I talked yesterday either.

yeah, my buddy owns DownRangeThermal and I have had him out hunting with me..
absolutely amazing..

They can’t compete with the real players in the civilian thermal market. Bye bye