Two weeks ago Gregory Knowles posted some photos from what looks like an industry convention. They were photos from what appears to be a Thales booth showcasing their new QNVG (Quad Night Vision Goggles).

Quad Tube Night Vision @TFB

• Friday Night Lights: Nocturn Industries Chimera-10 Articulating ANVIS-10 Bridge
• Nocturn Industries Chimera Quadtube PNVG
• Friday Night Lights: PP-NVG (Panning Panoramic Night Vision Goggles)

Thales is known for their Lucie night vision biocular (see my review here). Well, they seem to be making their first panoramic night vision goggle called the QNVG. Their quad goggle has some interesting features.

According to Gregory:

New prototype Thales quad-NVG. >120 degree FOV, ~600 grams, folded optical path on the outboard objective lenses/tubes. Clever stuff.

Photo by Gregory Knowles

Photo by Gregory Knowles

At first glance, the QNVG appears to have articulating pods. This is interesting but presents a problem. How does it set pupillary distance (PD)? The hinge just above the pods has screw-type IPD stops like a PVS-31 or BNVD-1431. However, the problem is that the outer pods are further away from the point of rotation. This will cause the pods to smile or frown depending on your PD.  If you look at the top photo closely, you can see the objective lens does seem to frown. This is more important with how the FOV will look.

The QNVG seems to have onboard power, I do not see any power cables coming out of the housing.

Photo by Gregory Knowles

I cropped the image above and below. There is some interesting geometry happening here. The two inner pods are straight forward and probably use inline tubes and glass. The other pods on the other hand more than likely use folded light path, just like Gregory posted online. The objective lenses don’t make sense otherwise.

The problem with the PD adjustment is that it relies on the pivot of the bridge. However, someone online told me they saw these in person and Thales explained to them that the inboard glass will be traditional 40º FOV while the outer pods use 50º FOV glass. He relayed what Thales told him. By using 50º FOV glass for the outer pods, The FOV is not adversely affected when you rotate the pods for PD.

This is just for illustrative purposes based on second-hand information. I drew this in Photoshop.

While this may solve the PD issue, I wonder how the actual image will look. 50º FOV tends to make the image smaller than 40º FOV.

Here is an example I posted in my SHOT Show 2023 article. This is comparing Act In Black’s 50º FOV glass with regular 40º FOV glass. I superimposed the 40º FOV over the larger 50º FOV. But to your eye, the two are the same size. The pattern in the 50º appears smaller.

I took the images above and mocked up what could possibly be the FOV out of the QNVG.

It might be possible the optics in the outer pods makes the image seem larger than the 40º FOV so the merged images have the same scale. But having used quad tube goggles, your peripheral vision does not pick up fine detail like that anyway so I doubt it would truly matter if the outer pod images appeared smaller. The wide FOV of panos has limited practicality anyway. It is great for CQB or driving a vehicle.

According to Gregory, the QNVG will have a FOV greater than 120º. I find that hard to imagine since the QTNVG uses 50º FOV in all of the lenses and only has a 120º FOV.  No mention of price but given it is Thales, it will probably be priced to compete against other quad tube systems like the GPNVG and will be sold to MIL/LE only.