The one upside to wearing a night vision system this dorky is that the only people who'll be able to catch you in it are other people wearing the exact same thing.

The High Resolution Night Vision System from SA Photonics improves on previous night vision systems by using multiple high-res digital sensors to provide a horizontal field of view of over 80 degrees, which is double that of other systems. Great. But if nobody is willing to wear it for fear of being mercilessly mocked by their colleagues, that field of view isn't going to do anybody any good now, is it?

The reason that this system looks the way it does is so that pilots can use it without having it obscure their vision: swing the little eyepieces out of the way, and the entire setup is out of your field of view. So that's handy. But still, wearing this thing is always going to be risky, because with it on, it's impossible to tell whether or not you're being eaten by a gigantic jumping spider:

Coincidence or conspiracy? You decide.

SA Photonics, via Gizmodo