Recently Meprolight (Israel) and Thales (France) have developed a new set of hybrid optics. From what we can see, they combine a regular 1x Red Dot sight (like Aimpoint or Eeothech) with also a FLIR type thermal imaging camera, and some 'smart' display that like the INVAS goggles creates a highlight of a mans silhouette to help 'decamoflauge' enemy forces.

Range of these optics is unknown, but I think this is an emerging technology we will see more of in the future.

Meprolight TIGON:

https://fragoutmag.com/meprolight-presents-the-mepro-tigon-a-hybrid-thermal-red-dot-sight-for-both-day-night-target-acquisition/

https://soldiersystems.net/2021/10/19/milipol-2021-meprolight-presents-the-mepro-tigon-a-hybrid-thermal-red-dot-sight-for-both-day-night-target-acquisition/#comments

And Thales XTRAIM:

Video of Thales:

https://youtu.be/bFYPSoPXFO4?t=393

What we're seeing here with these hybrid Day/Night optics, as well as the NGSW-FC and SMASH-2000, is what I'd call the 'Camera Phone' of optics. Whereas optics previously did one thing (phone) they now do 2 things in the same package (camera phone.) 

However the future I think we will see in the next 5-10 years is the 'Iphone Optic' where the optic does multiple things in one convenient package.

-Daytime optic

-Night Optic (IR and Thermal)

-Ballistic calculator and laser range finder for trajectory correction

-Ability to 'fire' the weapon when paired with electronic trigger 

-More features as more 'apps' are loaded into the sight. 

With computational power getting cheaper by the day, and with many of these technologies reaching the consumer market, the costs will go down, and such 'iPhone' sights will indeed become widespread.

Just recall that a decade ago or so level IV body armor was rare and now you can buy it from AliExpress. Ditto for drones with high resolution cameras and many other technologies.

"silouetting" capability is software-derived, right?

I am quite closely following the development of sights and one thing that is quite obvious is that the first-gen sights we are seeing now in development for the NGSW will be obsolete before they hit the market. Computerized IR optics have had these features nearly a decade ago. 

-thermal optic

-Ballistic calculator and laser range finder for trajectory correction

-Ability to 'fire' the weapon when paired with electronic trigger 

-IFF option

-GPS pairing

- remote wind sensor imputs.

IR sights were the obvious choice to 'smarten up' as they provide a synthetic vision so it's easy to make disturbed reticles and add all these features.

Glass optics so far have very primitive disturbed reticles, basically a range of predetermined reticle positions that light up upon demand and only move vertically, no movement side to side. 

Sights like Steiner Intelligent Combat Sight (ICS) 6x40 , are a joke , just a a rugged optic offering tech hunters have been using for more than a decade, not surprising to see Burris Eliminator tech in ICS as they are the same company.

I guessed that such conservative sights were mainly a risk management decission: as other parts of the system (mainly cartridge, possibly operation and extraction) were going to be quite a step, the program decission-makers opted for avoiding any further risks.

And as every NGSW candidate is going to be an advance compared with previous AR, such step is going to be less important than the integration in systems of systems of different scales, from an unified soldier system for which now we have the needed technology elements to BMS at different organic levels. For instance, FCS will have to operate paired with any IVAS-like visor. And FCS and its data will be send back and forth to a BMS 

The real thing that was holding this up before now was display technology...

Unfortunately, I think we're inevitably going to see a 5-20 year lag on these really propagating unless western defense establishments can cut the Gordian knot of intellectual property walled gardens we're currently hampered by.

I think there's a strong impetus to find a solution to this problem though since China gives zero fucks about IP law and WILL propagate this technology far wide and cheap while we screw around with patent law if we don't find a solution.

An psq-20 and 20a could do this too with fairly minimal brute processing power. The firearmblog has a feature on these available if you'd like to look at it.

When it comes to computational power getting cheap, that's only a very small part of what's going to make this stuff take off. 

The biggest thing that's really helping this take off is that computing power is taking LESS SWAPc every year.

what we can do right now is much more bottlenecked by decent display technology and power consumption than anything, but that's changing.

I don't necessarily think it has to be the psq-20 and the a and b models of these did it with very minimal onboard computing.

The real magic or lack thereof will be in the user interface and the ability to get information to a soldier effectively as well as letting him manipulate and utilize it QUICKLY.

That's where the real trick comes in is not creating so much cognitive loading that it slows the user down.

Probably, but also highlights the lack of understanding that FCS is the single most important upgrade to handheld firearms in modern times, new calibers, cases firearms are unimportant sideshows in comparison .

NGSW optics as they are are already obsolete and i am not seeing much competition to make it better, Chinese OEM manufacturers from what i can follow have a host of such optics for the commercial market under development i would expect OEM optics on the market in 2022-2025 under various US brands that like Vortex mostly sell Chinese developed and made optics.