I'm still not understanding, there's a piece of the puzzle I'm missing so I hope you don't mind if I just lay down my assumptions and understanding and maybe you can fill in the gap(s) that I'm missing?
The thermal optic uses a microbolometer to convert infrared light to electrical signals. Those electrical signals are then compared to one another and essentially given a numerical value that can be interpreted in various ways (black hot, white hot, etc). This interpretation of the electrical signal is output in a LCD/OLED screen at a set resolution depending on make and model, but up to about 640x480 at the highest end.
When you actually "use" a thermal optic, in simplified terms, you're looking through the LCD screen of a digital camera that sees infrared instead of visible light.
Digital zoom is done at a step after the image is converted but before it's output to the screen - it takes a smaller portion of the image in the middle and has it take up more pixels on the screen... the screen is still outputting at 640x480 (for example), but it might be 4 pixels represent 1 pixel of actual image data. The same thing happens when you enlarge a .jpg image on your computer. There isn't more image data to see when you enlarge it (for example, if it didn't exist in the image data due to resolution/optical/etc issues before you digitally enlarged it, it won't be in the image after you enlarge it), but it can make smaller things easier to see.
In this case, using a magnifying glass over a digital screen makes the physical pixels appear bigger whereas using digital zoom makes the virtual pixels bigger on the same physical pixels.
So maybe I'm not understanding because the screen is so tiny that making the physical pixels seem bigger by even 4 times still isn't allowing you to see the individual pixels? And the FOV of an optic could much bigger than the screen, thus giving you less loss of peripheral image data when magnifying?
I don't understand how it could be clearer though since again, you're not gaining any image data and are infact putting another barrier (albeit a very clear one) between your eye and the image.
ETA: Maybe FLIR System's software for digital zoom isn't that great? That could be one reason that explains the difference.
Last edited by Koshinn; 02-18-14 at 09:34.
"I never learned from a man who agreed with me." Robert A. Heinlein
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