Camouflage is the method which allows an otherwise visible organism or
object to remain indiscernible from the surrounding environment. Examples
include a tiger's stripes and the fatigues of a modern soldier. Camouflage is a form of deception.
Natural Camouflage
In nature, there is a strong evolutionary pressure for animals to blend into their environment; for prey animals to avoid
preditors and for some predators to be able to sneak up on prey.
Camouflage in military history
Successful camouflage became an essential part of modern military
tactics since the increase in accuracy and rate of fire of weapons at the end of the nineteenth century. The first recorded
large-scale use of camouflage was during World War I. At the beginning of the
war the French experienced heavy losses because the troops wore red trousers as part of their uniform. The French established a
section de camouflage in 1915. The camouflage experts were, for the most part,
painters, sculptors, theatre set artists and such. This led to a new horizon blue uniform and various camouflage paint schemes
for trucks, guns and planes. Units of Camoufleurs who were artists, designers, or architects in civilian life were also
largely used by the forces of the UK and the US and to a lesser extent by Germany (see, for example, Lozenge), Italy and Russia.
Ship camouflage
World War I also saw the advent of ship camouflage. Although most gunships were still painted a uniform grey, five schemes
were approved in the United States for merchant ship camouflage. Ships without camouflage were required to pay higher war risk
premiums.
Dazzle camouflage was briefly popular for ships in this
period. Unlike true camouflage, the "dazzle" scheme used high contrast and confusing shapes to make it difficult for enemy forces
to estimate a range to the target ship — critical in the age of "dumb" gunnery and
torpedoes. It was largely a failure and has passed into history.
William MacKay, the creator
of a popular scheme of camouflage approved by the Naval Consulting Board during World War I, wrote:
- The structural and characteristic lines and angles of a ship can be either softened or destroyed. According as the ship is
viewed through [a] red or green or blue filter the ship presents three different images and though none of them an image so
definite as a ship painted with a flat pigment gray.
Theory of camouflage
MacKay's statement above remains one of the most crucial elements in the theory of camouflage - an exact match with the
environment's colors is less crucial than the patterning of the regions of color themselves. Ideally, camouflage should be made
to break up and thereby conceal the structural lines of the object which it hides. Thus, the patterns often seen on camouflage
clothing, masking cloth and vehicle paints are carefully constructed to deceive the human eye by breaking up the boundaries that
define sharp edges and human silhouettes. Similarly, a tiger's stripes, when viewed in
the context of long grass or deeply shaded forest, have the same effect - making it hard to differentiate the tiger from the
background.
Modern camouflage research has developed environment-specific patterns such as "RealTree" and "Mossy Oak" which contain more
detailed visual elements than older camouflage. While these patterns are more effective than traditional camouflage patterns,
they are also very specific to an environment and season which precludes their general use for military purposes.
Progress has also been made in generalized camouflage patterns as well. In 2004, the US
Army joined the US Marine Corps in adopting an updated "digital camouflage" pattern to replace the traditional woodland pattern.
It is termed "digital" because much of the design was done on a computer and unlike other camouflage patterns, it is blocky and
appears almost pixelated.
Research also continues into adaptive camouflage, which is camouflage that changes to match its environment. One method of
doing this is by changing the pre-made pattern, either automatically as some animals can like the octopus, or manually by
reversing an article of clothing with a different pattern on either side.
True adaptive camouflage, which many would call "invisibility", is much
more difficult. In order to make true adaptive camouflage, a high resolution display that renders thousands of different angles,
depending on how the viewer looked at it (similar to a hologram), would have to be
made, and the display information would have to be interpolated from a few cameras as it is impossible to have one camera per
angle displayed. Additionally, the displays would have to be capable of extreme brightness to maintain their illusion during
daylight.
An example of this would be the camouflage used by the alien in the movie "Predator". The banding along the sides of the predator is a realistic graphical effect that is a
consequence of not rendering enough viewable angles to truly fool the eye.
While much of the display technology exists today, the capability to extrapolate, model, and render a scene at the multitude
of angles required and in real time involves more processing power than could be placed inside of an object camouflaged in such a
way. It may be possible, however, if real-time adaptation or a large number of viewable angles are not required, the latter of
which would result in parallax errors as seen in the predator's camouflage.
People with maskun or other color blindness have been used to detect camouflage, because they have heightened sensitivity to visual
patterns and their visual sensitivity curve is different from that of people with normal sight. Military camouflage schemes now
are designed with defined spectral properties — even outside the range of visible light to avoid detection by technical means like night vision devices. The other way around, one
can buy hunting garments with bright orange patches that stand out to the eyes of other hunters, but are supposed to appear as
camouflage to the game animals.
The opposite of camouflage is making a person or object more visible and easier to recognize, for example with retroreflectors and high-visibility clothing.
People who served as camouflage experts
- Jean-Louis Forain,
Jacques Villon, Andre Dunoyer de
Segonzac, Charles Camoin,
Ludwig-Casimir Marcoussis, Henri Bouchard, Charles Despiau, Abbott H. Thayer, Franz Marc, Oskar Schlemmer, Edward Wadsworth, William Stanley
Hayter, Arshile Gorky, Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood, László Moholy-Nagy,
Sir Hugh Casson, Ellsworth Kelly.
References
External links
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