What does the Pencott pattern do that other camouflage patterns don’t?

The Pencott pattern is different from the bulk of camouflage designs, in that it has been formulated to

• conceal more effectively at those distances that conventional camouflage works best at
• conceal at a longer distance than most other camouflage
• conceal at a shorter distance than most other camouflage
• conceal in a broader range of environmental backgrounds than most other camouflage

More effective concealment: The Pencott pattern’s unique fractal design works by dithering only four different and contrasting colours and tones into one another, giving the illusion of many more colours, and creating a combination of blended and hard edges in the pattern. Complex patterns like this are hard for the human eye to process, and recognisable shapes such as human limbs, or the lines of pockets and seams, become difficult to make out in the welter of confusing shades. Conventional military camouflage patterns often have quite bold patterns, with large hard-edged regions of colour, which are not as effective at fooling the observer: When different areas of pattern join at seams the difference in tone and colour makes the unnatural straight edge obvious, and serves to highlight, rather than hide the wearer.

Long distance concealment: The fractal design of the Pencott pattern is multi-scale, meaning that both close up and far away it still has ‘pattern’. Many camouflage designs have small constituent elements (micro-patterns) that fail to work as effectively at longer ranges and ‘blob out’, which is the non-technical term for the effect of camouflage no longer appearing to have any pattern or contrast, thus negating the disruptive effect. Most ‘woodland’ camouflage also suffers from being generally too dark for open terrain, so that figures stand out against their lighter surroundings. The Pencott pattern not only has an effective macro-pattern for long range disruption, but averages lighter overall as well, meaning that when it eventually ‘blobs out’ at several metres further than the competition, it takes on a khaki-olive cast, which equates to many more environments, both natural and manmade.

Short distance concealment: At close ranges the micro-pattern in Pencott means that it continues to fool the eye even when other camouflage patterns have been detected. At a certain point even the best camouflage fabric in the world looks just that: camouflage printed fabric. With the Pencott pattern that distance is closer than it’s ever been.

Concealment in a broader range of environments: Although all camouflage clothing employs colour crypsis - even the venerable olive drab (OD) battledress is a form of cryptic camouflage - disruptive pattern camouflage can sometimes weaken the effect of crypsis by introducing colours to the pattern that look alien in a particular environment, either because such colours seldom occur or because they are present in different amounts in nature. An example is the black tone used in patterns such as US M81 Woodland and British DPM (Disruptive Pattern Material): It blends with shadows and dark twigs in its optimum forest environment, but is actually more noticeable in grassland and urban surroundings, while being totally impractical in arid desert landscapes. Consequently armies field different camouflage uniforms for different climatic conditions, and commercial hunting camouflage designs are even more specifically tailored to the terrain that the hunter will be using. The Pencott pattern is composed of the nine hues most commonly found in today’s environments and is broken into dark, mid and light tones.

How does the Pencott pattern work?

The Pencott pattern uses a complex fractal geometry to achieve a mixture of crypsis and disruption. This serves to disguise the wearer’s shape and helps him blend with the background.

Some of the best camouflage in nature exhibits coincident disruption - both crypsis and disruption. Think of many reptiles, birds, amphibians and fish and you’ll see what we mean. Good concealment like this demands contrasting tones, yet colours that blend with the surroundings. In Gestalt theories of perception a figure that is indistinguishable from the ground it is on is known as embedded. We designed our camouflage according to these Gestalt principles, so that a person wearing The Pencott pattern becomes embedded against the ground.

The zoologist and camouflage expert Hugh Cott hypothesized that disruptive colouration would be especially effective if: (i) some patches on an individual stand out from the background, while other patches blend in (termed differential blending), and (ii) adjacent pattern elements are highly contrasting in tone (known as maximum disruptive contrast).

A camouflage pattern, whether in nature or manmade, will therefore work better if it combines differential blending and maximum disruptive contrast in a coincidental disruptive scheme. This is what the Pencott pattern has been designed to achieve.

How was the Pencott pattern developed?

Our Pencott design has a pattern created using a combination of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) graphics programs. The algorithms employed are based on thorough analysis of the most effective camouflage patterns found in the wild, combined with observational data on hue and tone occurrence and distribution in nature. Additional comparative qualitative assessments of existing camouflage clothing patterns were introduced during the initial development phase. The pattern was then prototyped and development progressed to field trials.

It looks a bit like other ‘digital’ patterns – isn’t it the same?

No. At first glance the Pencott pattern appears to share a similar ‘pixelated’ principle to some other camouflage, such as Canadian CADPAT and the US Marine Corp's MARPAT, but in fact it has a completely different pattern. Both these military camouflage designs were conceived as four-colour patterns and optimised for woodland operations. CADPAT, in particular, is the most effective camouflage available to date for use in European and North American forests. But it has too much black for open ground, the green is too dark for arid areas, and it stands out like a traffic light in cities and towns. We believe that Pencott’s unique simulated nine-colour combination blends better across more environments than other designs. Both CADPAT and MARPAT have a lateral bias to their patterns – that is, they are somewhat stripy. Though this simulates shadow forms found in bushes and ferns, it means that the uniform material must always be cut and positioned with reference to the ‘grain’ of the pattern, increasing waste and complicating production, which in turn costs more. The Pencott pattern has a multi-directional pattern that works just as well whether rotated 90, 180 or 270 degrees! All other factors being equal, a uniform in the Pencott pattern will be cheaper to produce than most other four-colour uniforms.

What's in a name?

Our signature Pencott pattern is named after two influential British camoufleurs: Sir Roland Penrose and Hugh B. Cott.

Penrose and Cott differed radically in their approach toward camouflage. On the one hand, Penrose, as an artist, used his training and intuition to produce camouflage schemes through a process of trial and error. With his thorough grasp of cubist and surrealist principles, he sought to trick the eye of the beholder with contrasting colours and tones, and organic, disruptive shapes, thus converting the object from a recognizable shape into an unidentifiable form. Cott, however, felt that art had little or no relevance to what was essentially a scientific, analytical process. By drawing on examples of camouflage in nature, a camoufleur could produce an effective scheme without any need for artistic training.

Art vs. Science

At Hyde Definition we recognize that both approaches have their merits and need not be mutually exclusive. We have studied the problem of camouflage from the Pointillist, Post-Impressionist, Cubist, Surrealist, Expressionist and Op Art points of view, and we have looked at zoological camouflage in insects, arachnids, crustaceans, molluscs, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. We have used the colours of nature, both physically and digitally sampled, and from the hundreds of tones we plotted, calculated an average frequency of occurrence for each.

We were concerned that most current Western camouflage patterns are designed for a woodland environment, and average too dark to be effective outside this terrain. We noted that this terrain is easiest to conceal oneself in, due to the preponderance of cover, and that infantrymen would need their personal camouflage to be effective in more open ground, or at roadsides, since this is their common operating environment when manoeuvering or patrolling. We decided to design for these harder hiding places, not for wooded or urban areas, as we reasoned that this would be where a good camouflage pattern could be most useful. Feeling that such terrain offered limited scope for a purely blending solution, we instead opted for a high contrast coincident-disruptive design. Cross-referencing the most frequently found colours with data relating to user operating environments and tactics, we evolved a pattern through several hundred iterations, trialing over two dozen samples in natural environments.

Design

The resulting design, the Pencott pattern, combines grass and pale foliage tones with several earth colours and a grey that matches both rock and weathered wood. Pale khaki highlights work with the dark brown elements to achieve a three dimensional effect at shorter ranges. There is no black in this pattern: the illusion of depth is created by the juxtaposition of highly contrasting shades, and by the light green elements (which, through an optical illusion due to the way humans perceive colour, appear to recede or sit behind the warmer earth tones in the pattern). Irregular dark patches blend with shadows, bark and dark soil as well as breaking up the human body’s distinctive shape. False edges at the high-difference boundaries of these patches further confuse the eye. It is multi-fractal, meaning it carries a micro-pattern (close range), a macro-pattern (long range), and an innovative midi-pattern (middle range). This ensures that the Pencott design continues to conceal whether its wearer is four metres away, or 400.

PENrose + COTT = Pencott

Our Pencott pattern exhibits a combination of art and science, and so who better to name it after than these two stalwart pioneers of the craft?