Poll: If you had to choose a colour to see trough, what would it be and why that colour?

[Grimbold]

No pink? Are you kidding me? Why would I want another color. I even happen to own pink glasses.
Well then I would choose red and pretend I am a killer robot. Or green and pretend I am a soldier with night vision...

 

[Velocity Eleven]

this is an incredibly strange question

 

[esperandote]

Black so I can see in the dark.

 

[LeonLethality]

I, and many others on this thread it seems, are confused.

Is this "Pick one color to see through" as in, "seeing through a film of that color," or "you have a form of x-ray vision, but it only works on one color, i.e. everything in that particular color is see-through to you"?

I believe he means, pick a colour, and anything that was that colour before is now transparent, judging by his OP.

I don't think I'd seriously pick any. It seems like more of an inconvenience than anything.

 

[Sectan]

I'd like to see through the color Clothes. Simple as that.

 

[Cazza]

Similar question...but veeeeeeeeery different.

White... Easiest to imagine..lots of white school uniforms.....what?



Edit: Also I am a middle schooler because that made me look like a pedo (Dammit!)

Is it to everyone or just you? If it was everyone the uniforms wouldn't be white.

I will choose silver the colour that will fuck up mirrors.

 

[Farther than stars]

Yeah, best if this stays a hypothetical, huh? It's interesting though, because a lot of animals only see certain colours, primates actually having a rather wide spectrum which they can see. And I also wonder how some seriously colour blind humans operate with those issues you mentioned.

Well, they can see those colours as shades of grey, not as invisible. However, there are practical uses for this...hunters wearing blaze orange so they are highly visible to each other, but not to their prey, which sees them as drably coloured, for example. Tiger camouflage works that way as well, except tigers can't see each other as brightly coloured.

You never, ever, ever see this in science fiction. Nobody makes camouflage patterns based on what colours the aliens can or can't see, nobody has tac-lights in colours the aliens can't see, etc. You could get away with crazy garish uniforms from the 1800s if you said it didn't look like that to the aliens. I'd love to see it explained that the reason British soldiers wore those bright red shirts was because the crab people saw them as drab grey.

As for human colour blindness, it's an issue, yeah. Alot of things are colour coded nowdays...most obviously green for go and red for stop. One of the most common colour blindness renders you unable to differentiate between red and green.

That's interesting to know. Although I always thought that when animals couldn't see a certain colour, they just saw the same object but with a different colour over it. You know, since every beam of light consists of multiple wavelengths, I figured that if they couldn't see the red colours of a cushion they'd just see its yellow wavelengths, instead of the red we see as the peak of electromagnetic radiation.
That's an interesting thing about aliens too by the way. I'm actually writing a novel at the moment that involves an alien conspiracy and I've been working on their theoretical existence. I'm thinking of going with a silicon-based lifeform, but now that you mention their vision I think I'll be focusing on an entirely new working of their perception, so thanks for mentioning it.
As for the red and green thing, that's true, except for in most video games when it relates to shooting. In that case green says: "don't shoot; not a threat" and red means: "ice the ************!"

 

[Thaluikhain]

That's interesting to know. Although I always thought that when animals couldn't see a certain colour, they just saw the same object but with a different colour over it. You know, since every beam of light consists of multiple wavelengths, I figured that if they couldn't see the red colours of a cushion they'd just see its yellow wavelengths, instead of the red we see as the peak of electromagnetic radiation.

That's true, yeah, they'd still see the other wavelengths present, but you could make things that merely gave off one wavelenght of visible light if you wanted, to keep it simple. Of course, it'd look flat, you'd want to stick other colours on top to make it mottled...the way you don't wear plain green camouflage. You get blaze orange hunting jackets with black patterns stuck on top for this reason...you could have different shades of orange or something, but then you still want to be very clearly visible to other primates with guns.

That's an interesting thing about aliens too by the way. I'm actually writing a novel at the moment that involves an alien conspiracy and I've been working on their theoretical existence. I'm thinking of going with a silicon-based lifeform, but now that you mention their vision I think I'll be focusing on an entirely new working of their perception, so thanks for mentioning it.

Silicon might be a bit tricky, would change all sorts of things (also, no particular reason to use silicon that I know of, other than everyone else does when they don't want to use carbon). But yeah, their perceptions would be a massive factor, in all sorts of ways. People just get lazy and make them like human. Human warfare is based around fighting other humans, it'd be very weird if things that worked in different ways turned up.

Apparently, though, it's not so easy to make a "colour-blindness emulator", to allow you to see what it looks like to someone with different vision...possible, but fiddly. That sorta thing would be essential when running into aliens with different vision.

And, that's only different varieties of vision. Other senses would be even weirder. You don't even see stuff like echo-location much, and that exists in various animals here on Earth.

It'd open up all sorts of avenues for weird communications (or jamming) equipment, or give an excuse why the alien invaders can be generally scary, but have problems with local conditions the humans don't mind.

As for the red and green thing, that's true, except for in most video games when it relates to shooting. In that case green says: "don't shoot; not a threat" and red means: "ice the ************!"

Yeah, I've sometimes wondered why they don't sometimes have "green, allowed to shoot" and "red no, do'nt fire", just to confuse people used to playing it the other way

 

[Farther than stars]

That's interesting to know. Although I always thought that when animals couldn't see a certain colour, they just saw the same object but with a different colour over it. You know, since every beam of light consists of multiple wavelengths, I figured that if they couldn't see the red colours of a cushion they'd just see its yellow wavelengths, instead of the red we see as the peak of electromagnetic radiation.

That's true, yeah, they'd still see the other wavelengths present, but you could make things that merely gave off one wavelenght of visible light if you wanted, to keep it simple. Of course, it'd look flat, you'd want to stick other colours on top to make it mottled...the way you don't wear plain green camouflage. You get blaze orange hunting jackets with black patterns stuck on top for this reason...you could have different shades of orange or something, but then you still want to be very clearly visible to other primates with guns.

The thing is that there are very few sources of light which show very specific wavelengths. Sodium-vapor lamps are of course a classic example of that, with only two very thin spectrums of yellow light, so if an animal can't see that far into the infrared part of the spectrum, they potentially couldn't see that light or anything that reflects it.
As for the silicon thing, there's a whole slew of reasons why it would be interesting to have an ecosystem based on that, but like I said, it's in a very early thought process.

 

[Thaluikhain]

The thing is that there are very few sources of light which show very specific wavelengths. Sodium-vapor lamps are of course a classic example of that, with only two very thin spectrums of yellow light, so if an animal can't see that far into the infrared part of the spectrum, they potentially couldn't see that light or anything that reflects it.

Well, perhaps, but it wouldn't be that hard to stick a filter on top of the light source, surely? Alot of wasted energy that way, though.