Individual visible spectrum camouflage

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Here's a summary of what I think I understood about individual (and exclusively regarding the human visible spectrum) camouflage so far:

Personal observation:

• I suck at spotting camouflaged persons at any reasonable distance. I really, really do.
• Maybe that's why I respect the effect of camouflage as much as I do.

 

Just in case someone trusts the competence of bureaucracies to procure the best possible camo.

About camouflage patterns (excluding snow camo):

• micropatterns matter only at short distances
• macropatterns are important for breaking up recognisable silhouettes at longer distances (30+ m)
• digital camo was a 2000's fashion and is a way of combining a micropattern with a macropattern. That was done in Flecktarn earlier and without the digital style, though
• the longer the distances and the poorer the light, the less do the colours matter and the more do brightness contrasts matter to keep up contrast in the pattern (there's a limit, though)
• that's why black makes sense in camouflage patterns even though there's not much black in nature. Another reason for black in patterns is that it's quite the same as shadows, and those are plenty in nature.
• white or very light yellow or very light brown colours may serve to maximise the contrast by adding a light colour instead of black
• colours get washed out over time and much contrast is then lost
• soaked wet clothes are darker and lose contrast compared to dry ones (though impregnation should keep good clothes from becoming that wet)
• all camo patterns can be turned into the irregular "mud camo" pattern in almost no time 
• the former point applies especially to pattern-camouflaged boots
• at very long ranges almost everything that matters is whether you have approximately the same brightness as your background (example Yehudi lights) (this issue is the aforementioned limit)
• any coloured clothes - even pink ones - can be turned much less conspicuous by adding a dense black net
• camouflage patterns get disrupted a lot by gear, and often times the gear destroys the macro pattern effect or even creates easily recognisable new outlines (especially when the gear such as a chest rig uses a different camouflage pattern or is unicolour). Such extra gear may also create shadows (especially next to pouches) that greatly alter the appearance
• good camouflage patterns discourage the use of additional camouflage measures on the pattern-covered areas
• all camo patterns appear to be realised as tiles, though in theory one could use fractal algorithms etc to create boundless patterns that are functional on very large areas without repeating tiles
• camouflage patterns were used as means of identifying friend or foe in infantry battles when most camouflage clothing was still unicolour; it's often claimed that this inhibited the adoption of camo patterns by the Western Allies in Europe
• old Warsaw Pact-style stripe camo patterns (which can be created easily with household utensils) appear to have fallen out of use
• plants in nature often have a vertical structure (though branches are often horizontal) - this makes horizontally-dominated pattern such as the well-known tiger stripe pattern questionable
• the earliest land warfare camouflage pattern was probably the fairly standardised style (or fashion) of painting Stahlhelme, guns and motor vehicles in WW1
• the first mass-produced camouflage pattern was afaik Heeres-Splittermuster 31, but it was used for tent tarps (Zeltbahn 31) rather than clothing. The triangle tarp was also used as a kind of poncho and for much else, though
• military camouflage is abstract, while civilian hunting camouflage may be photorealistic (example Realtree patterns)
• for reasons utterly unknown to me I don't know of a single serious attempt to mimic the evolution-optimised camouflage of stalking predators of the relevant geographic region (such as lynx, wild cat) in military camouflage tests or even mass-produced products

• sometimes new camo patterns were created and introduced into armed services simply because the bureaucracy didn't want to pay the license fee for an existing (usually extremely similar) pattern (see OCP)
• there are fun camo patterns  
• some camo patterns got excused for their ineffectiveness at camouflaging anyone by pointing out how well they hide stains  instead of their wearer (this applies especially to proprietary air force and navy patterns)
• camo patterns are often selected for utterly nonsensical reasons (see the Chinese marines' "smurf" camo or UCP) instead of effectiveness. Sometimes camo patterns are introduced to break uniformity; different armed services insist on different patterns  for different branding/identity, or "special forces" get their own camo to feel better than regular army

About non-pattern individual camouflage:

• face paint draws most of its effect from messing with face detection; Europeans expect darkness above or around eyes, and lips darker than the skin. Hence we should have the normally light-coloured skin areas darker than the ordinarily darker face areas after the application of camo paint
• helmets have an easily recognisable shape, thus it has to be changed by scrims, foliage or Mitznefet-like camo
• leaf camouflage may have much camouflage effect at short ranges akin to micropatterns
• face masks/balaclavas are incredibly effective if they have a decent pattern, but maintaining a full field of view is more important than face camouflage maximisation (for general infantry - it's debatable for snipers)
• partial concealment greatly enhances almost any camouflage because it breaks up the silhouette
• ghillie suits are a fire hazard if not treated chemically, may be quite hot (insulation by boundary layer effect), may obstruct access to carried equipment and are quite impractical in general use - ghillies can be fascinatingly effective camo when the featured colours were tailored to the area, though
• often times unicolour (black, brown or light brown) boots, weapons, gloves or knee protectors ruin the effect of camouflage patterns
• externally carried large munitions (such as anti-tank rounds) may have a disastrous effect on camouflage quality as well
• the oldest camo clothes in Europe were unicolour (often greyish or greenish), and the Bundeswehr kept using such an approach into the 90's. Unicolour is still in much use for non-clothes infantry gear (chest rigs, pouches, gun slings, guns, large munitions, night vision goggles mounts on helmets). Coyote brown appears to be a fashionable choice for this, though matte black and dark green tones are also in very widespread use.

This may be debatable:

My personal favourite from a purely aesthetic point of view is Realtree xtra. This one looks perfectly compatible with civilian life in Germany (on a t-shirt), year round. It was seemingly designed to have a camouflage effect up close (the similar Realtree Edge pattern is supposed to have a macro pattern effect).

the Realtree xtra tile

As a personal insight I came to the conclusion that a brownish pattern should work best as an all-seasons pattern in Central and NE Europe. Brown is not out of place anywhere where one might reasonably try to remain undetected by camouflage (that is, not in the midst of green grass, for example). It's even very inconspicuous in many urban areas. Brown works even where most background is green because it's still not terribly unrealistic/out of place and works especially fine with partial concealment. Green by contrast is quite out of place in many urban, suburban and rural environments for at least half of the year (except again on the rather irrelevant grass areas). Brown isn't very good at providing contrast, though. An addition of a little sand-like yellow and some black (dark brown might lose too much when washed out) may be necessary. A little - actually very little as in xtra- green could be added as well.

Interestingly, this comes close to some brown-dominated hunting camos as the one shown above.

I consider the velcro patch areas way too generously large on many current field jackets, especially on those meant for civilian buyers. Patches and stuff should be worn on office clothes or ceremonial clothes, not on camouflage/field clothing. Medics are exempted, of course.

I never really figured out what's the idea behind the Kryptek style of camo patterns. It's supposedly micro/macro with a (warped) net effect, but I simply don't see enough contrast for real macro camouflage effect in most of the patterns ("altitude" is an exception).

Infantrymen and scouts should be kept dissatisfied with their camo pattern, to keep them motivated to adapt to the terrain with improvised (additional) camouflage.

There are too many pseudo-tacticool fake camo patterns in civilian clothing fashion in my opinion.

Last but not least; an obligatory video on the camouflage topic:

related:

/2012/12/camo-fabrics.html

/2012/03/fun-german-snow-camouflage-1968.html

/2015/02/isoluminence-camouflage.html

/2014/11/how-to-camouflage-helmet-in-2-seconds.html

/2013/11/fun-u-do-it-wrong.html

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

P.S.: Just to be super-accurate: The first (famous) photo may be a bit untrue to the real situation. The UCP camo looks too blueish. UCP was a disaster nevertheless, and just about everybody was able to see it for what it was from the beginning.

edit few days later: I'd like to add that we need a different approach regarding macropatterns with arms, worn accessories, AT munitions and guns than in the pattern tiles for  torso, legs, tarps and rucksacks. Those are large areas, but the often narrow and long guns, light AT munitions and even arms cannot really make use of the tile macropatterns - darker or lighter becomes random on those. We should thus have a separate pattern with identical colour palette for such items - and it should provide a dark-light-dark-light-dark-light sequence along the narrow item to break its silhouette up.So any camouflage pattern should actually have two tiles - one for large surfaces and one for narrow surfaces (the latter would need to be used with an approximately correct orientation).

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