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Extreme Long Range Hunting & Shooting (ELR)
Where is tech at on laser wind sensing?
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<blockquote data-quote="BallisticsGuy" data-source="post: 1300332" data-attributes="member: 96226"><p>The question itself exposes a lack of understanding or just a pause in understanding about lasers and digital signal processing but let's follow it through because it's a neat topic. The short answer is, too many problems that can't be gotten around.</p><p></p><p>Laser measurement of anything relies on the laser light itself being affected in some way by the thing being measured so that that alteration can be measured. You don't measure range with a laser, you measure time and time gives you the range. It's indirect. For laser ranging we rely on lights' ability to be reflected and it having a fixed and enormously high speed of propagation. Moving air in a homogeneous mass won't distort a laser because the air molecules in any one section of space are only being replaced by others, the pressure/density and most importantly refractive index isn't being changed. If you were to shoot that laser through regions of greatly differing air density (a heterogeneous air mass) then you might be able to make something work by measuring the distortion of received or reflected light. That gets to another large problem, the inverse square law of the propagation of light. If you double the distance you need 4x the power to get the same intensity. That's fine for targets that are consistently far away but it means that you're using needlessly high wattage closer in.</p><p></p><p>Once you get past the problems of the behavior of light and basic physics you need to get to the analytics portion. Since you can't precognitively know where the target will be in all situations and targets don't always stand still we can't send a receiver/processor to the target in advance that would be able to process the distortion of a beam of laser light. Even if we could process distortion at the target the final reporting signal would need to be relayed back to the FFP in near real time. </p><p></p><p>That's another problem of the inverse square law: reducing received wattage. So, we'd need to be able to get the light to return to a sensor at the FFP with sufficient wattage to be picked up so we can process that signal and then the actual processing becomes a problem to sort out. </p><p></p><p>Consider that air doesn't ever behave itself. It is constantly changing invisibly. Filled with currents that spin and fold inside the main mass, never repeating any one configuration and it never stops moving. How do you report on the current position of something that's nearly random in its behavior when that current position will by definition be in the past by the time it's reported on. As such, real time processing of distortion (any processing of light returned to the FFP) doesn't make it possible to certify the accuracy of the measurement.</p><p></p><p>So basically, you're rooster blocked at every turn. Physics doesn't seemingly like us asking this sort of question.</p><p></p><p>This is what keeps us in the game. There's one thing nobody will ever truly solve for. Wind. People can individually develop the skill and hone the art but to systematize and instrument wind over distances larger than the conversational at a level of precision suited to long range precision rifle shooting is a fantasy vignette contained within a cylinder which is open on both ends.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="BallisticsGuy, post: 1300332, member: 96226"] The question itself exposes a lack of understanding or just a pause in understanding about lasers and digital signal processing but let's follow it through because it's a neat topic. The short answer is, too many problems that can't be gotten around. Laser measurement of anything relies on the laser light itself being affected in some way by the thing being measured so that that alteration can be measured. You don't measure range with a laser, you measure time and time gives you the range. It's indirect. For laser ranging we rely on lights' ability to be reflected and it having a fixed and enormously high speed of propagation. Moving air in a homogeneous mass won't distort a laser because the air molecules in any one section of space are only being replaced by others, the pressure/density and most importantly refractive index isn't being changed. If you were to shoot that laser through regions of greatly differing air density (a heterogeneous air mass) then you might be able to make something work by measuring the distortion of received or reflected light. That gets to another large problem, the inverse square law of the propagation of light. If you double the distance you need 4x the power to get the same intensity. That's fine for targets that are consistently far away but it means that you're using needlessly high wattage closer in. Once you get past the problems of the behavior of light and basic physics you need to get to the analytics portion. Since you can't precognitively know where the target will be in all situations and targets don't always stand still we can't send a receiver/processor to the target in advance that would be able to process the distortion of a beam of laser light. Even if we could process distortion at the target the final reporting signal would need to be relayed back to the FFP in near real time. That's another problem of the inverse square law: reducing received wattage. So, we'd need to be able to get the light to return to a sensor at the FFP with sufficient wattage to be picked up so we can process that signal and then the actual processing becomes a problem to sort out. Consider that air doesn't ever behave itself. It is constantly changing invisibly. Filled with currents that spin and fold inside the main mass, never repeating any one configuration and it never stops moving. How do you report on the current position of something that's nearly random in its behavior when that current position will by definition be in the past by the time it's reported on. As such, real time processing of distortion (any processing of light returned to the FFP) doesn't make it possible to certify the accuracy of the measurement. So basically, you're rooster blocked at every turn. Physics doesn't seemingly like us asking this sort of question. This is what keeps us in the game. There's one thing nobody will ever truly solve for. Wind. People can individually develop the skill and hone the art but to systematize and instrument wind over distances larger than the conversational at a level of precision suited to long range precision rifle shooting is a fantasy vignette contained within a cylinder which is open on both ends. [/QUOTE]
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Where is tech at on laser wind sensing?
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