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THE BASICS
MultiCam™ is a single camouflage pattern designed to help the wearer hide in
varied environments, seasons, elevations, and light conditions.
It was designed to address the real-world need for concealment in different
environments, with one basic kit of gear.
While there are many great location-specific patterns. MultiCam™ is designed to
work well across a very broad range of environmental conditions when observed in
both the visual and near Infra Red (night vision) spectrums.
HOW IT WORKS
TAKES ON THE SHADES OF THE SURROUNDING ENVIRONMENT
The pattern is subtle enough to reflect some of the surrounding colors of the
environment. It takes on an overall green appearance when under a green forest
canopy and an overall tan look when in the open desert. By adapting to varying
local lighting conditions, the pattern blends well in many environments,
elevations, seasons, weather conditions, and times of the day.
DISGUISES VOLUME AND SHAPE
The design takes advantage of the way the human eye/brain perceives shape,
volume and color. By using proprietary high resolution digital fades from one
color to another, the colors and shapes of the pattern become hard to recognize
and define. The wearer's profile begins to loose its edge and fades into
whatever color or shape surrounds him. It works on the principle that an
observer can see something but still not recognize it as anything to be
interested in. Since only a very small portion of the human eye perceives color,
the brain does a lot of “filling-in” for the eye. MultiCam™ takes advantage of
this principle and helps the observer to “see” the pattern as part of the
background.
BALANCED SCALE AND CONTRAST
The scale and contrast of the pattern elements are designed to work well when
observed from both distant and close ranges. We all know the idea is to break-up
or disguise the human form, but without a ghillie suit or a rock to get behind,
this is typically done with heavy contrast between large elements of a pattern.
However, high contrast, large element patterns stop working in open terrain
(e.g. "chocolate chip" in open desert.) They also tend to stop working as the
observer gets closer to the camouflage, since the large pattern elements end up
being out of scale with the highly detailed surroundings of the observer.
MultiCam™ relies more on a blending effect than a contrast effect to disguise
the wearer. This effect allows it to perform in a wide range of environments,
and keeps the pattern effective even at close distances.
HOW IT WAS DEVELOPED
The MultiCam™ pattern was developed by Crye Precision in co-operation with
the US Army Natick Soldier Research Center, as an experiment to determine
whether a single camouflage pattern could be effective in limiting the visual
and near-IR signature of a person across a wider range of environments and
seasons.
Soon after American forces first deployed to Afghanistan, a problem with the
camouflage patterns used by the US armed forces became immediately apparent.
Watching the daily footage of US Forces in the mountains of Afghanistan and the
deserts of Iraq wearing Desert BDUs and Woodland gear and remembering that the
same problem had shown up 10 years earlier in the first gulf war, we decided
good camouflage for where you are might be better than perfect camouflage for
somewhere else.
We spent a lot of time looking at how natural camouflage works, how animals
blend with their environments and how natural objects take on the colors that
surround them. We considered where it is hardest to hide and studied which
terrain/environmental elements were common to as many environments as possible.
We studied how light effects environmental elements. We also tracked the
seasonal and elevation changes that affect any one region and tried to factor
all this together to make a highly adaptive and effective pattern. We then
started putting our findings to the test by creating a digital composite of our
observations. We spent a lot of time talking with users, going over our approach
with them, factoring in their observations and concerns about everything from
getting rid of black to launderability. We then when back to the computer and
created a digital image with over 100 layers, trying to match our basic idea for
how we thought it could work. Once we had something we liked, we started
prototyping it and testing it. We tested it for over a year and a half with the
US Army and found it to be more effective than we had originally thought
possible. After two consecutive tests by the US Army, where it came in top out
of all candidates, we tuned it for production and have what is now called
MultiCam™.
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