Testing effectivness of Veil with a laser pointer

[Dilip]

Hello

I was very impressed by Nvr2fast's recent veil job, it looks good, he did not use the brush or the other thing that comes with veil package.

We used a laser pointer to test veil's effectiveness. What we did was to point the laser pointer at teh lights, and see if any refelction will go back onto my hand or onto my T-shirt.

The results were that the laser reflection off the veiled lights was very very low, the laser beam became dim and diffused/smudged, which means that veil was very effective at reducing reflectivity.

In fact, his car's black bumper gave out much more reflection than the veiled headlights.

We then tried it on my unveiled headlights, and dammn.... the reflections were bright and going everywhere!!!

This shows that Veil when applied properly onto headlights, will reduce it's reflectivity so much that the car's paint becomes even more reflective.

As for his liscense plate, he devised his own method of making the plate non-reflective. No laser shiled no veil. he used sand paper to make the surface rough and smudged, and he put something else on it as well but i dunno what. As a result, the laser beam reflected was also dim and diffused, similar to the veiled headlights. Compared to my untreated license plate the beam was super bright and well defined.

Further more, his HID headlights are not as badly affected by veil compared to how my HID's were when my car used to have veil. this leads me to suggest that perhaps i put too much veil resulting in the lights getting too dim.

Therefore i'm going to try veiling my car again using his method and doing everything his way since it'll be a while before i get a drive-smart...

I think Nvr2fast has pretty good protection against laser. His Mitsubishi chrome logo is also veiled soooo nicely that it's so smooth and clean and looks nice. The laser pointer reflection from the chrome is also dim and diffused which proves vei's effectiveness. Only problem is that his X50 did not detect the LTI's during the past 3 laser encounters, even though it was mounted low. STrange that I was behind him and my V1 actually alerted while his X50 did not. Perhaps his black bonnet makes the X50 less sensitive to laser because the laser doesn't get reflected off the hood? Because when i used to have an X50, i'd get my laser alerts everytime i got hit.

So..... hope this is interesting information to some of you and i hope Bob (veil guy) would be kind enough to share your comments.

Thanks
Dilip

[jimbonzzz]

Although the VEIL's effects on the laser pointer is an interesting "side effect" that might provide some additional benefits, I don't think it is any kind of guage of VEIL's true effectiveness.

VEIL Guy can correct me if I'm wrong, but VEIL isn't meant to "reduce reflectivity" throughout the light spectrum. It is designed to absorb near-infrared light, while still allowing a substantial portion of visible light to pass. Thus, one cannot guage real effectiveness of a VEIL application using a visible light source such as a laser pointer.

Jim

[sethy]

Although the VEIL's effects on the laser pointer is an interesting "side effect" that might provide some additional benefits, I don't think it is any kind of guage of VEIL's true effectiveness.

VEIL Guy can correct me if I'm wrong, but VEIL isn't meant to "reduce reflectivity" throughout the light spectrum. It is designed to absorb near-infrared light, while still allowing a substantial portion of visible light to pass. Thus, one cannot guage real effectiveness of a VEIL application using a visible light source such as a laser pointer.

Jim

I thought somthing along this line too. The laser pointer may be dimmer, but this is actually a side effect of it. I thought it was designed to absorb IR light.

[nvr2fast]

Well, all I know is that for my license plate, the results are very similar to those of the Laser Shield. I actually took Dilip's laser shield he got from Roy, and tried many various substances to see what work work and what would result in similar reflectivity. Sandpaper plus a special spray that can be used to prevent "aging" of electronics that are exposed to IR light (ie. under constant suchshine) helped. Just sandpaper (and considerable elbow grease) worked okay as well if you don't mind it being slightly rough.

In this sense, I'm changing the actual way the light reflects/refracts off the surface of the license plate (especially the retroreflective backing that is white or yellow), so since the physical properties are changed, it doesn't matter if it is visible light, infrared, ultraviolet, etc. the reflections are greatly reduced. I know it will affect different wavelengths differently but you get my idea.

As for the Veil, well, no comment on that. I find a considerable reduction in light output on my Evo... and previously on my S2000. Veil WILL absorb visible light as well... so perhaps the "laser pointer reflection test" shows more how the visible light is absorb rather than showing how much IR is absorbed :lol:

I am soon getting a Sony camcorder with IR night mode, so at that point I'll be able to test more accurately. But I thought the laser pointer test, which I was doing more for the modded license plate rather than the Veil, was a good indicator test.

[Veil Guy]

Interesting findings guys.

Veil does several different things concurrently...some obviously in the VIS. If one were to examine an IR pointing device one would see that the attenuation even greater!

At any rate, when we conducted our comprehensive laser detector test several months back, we found that the performance of the laser detectors could be enhanced by slightly pitching the detector forward. I believe this maximizes the chance of see laser reflection off of the hood.

For those of you who have missed it:

laser detectors review (http://www.laserveil.com/laser-detector-performance)

Hope this helps.

Dilip, I suspect that's why some users feel that VEIL dims the lights too much...probably as a result of a little too much VEIL on the lights.

Veil Guy 8)

[Dilip]

Jim

I know veil is supposed to block IR light while letting visiable light through. But just imagine that it can achieve such good results on a red laser pointer, it should mean that with IR light the effect would be even better. This just further proves how good veil is.

It also shows that the sand paper/elbow grease method that nvr2fast used is effective at making his plate non-reflective similar to the laser shield. Now we just need to test it against a real laser gun.

Bob, do you think a (non v1) detector would perform more poorly on a black car as opposed to a silver/white/yellow car? Furthermore, Nvr2fast's evo 9 has a huge air vent with the net on the front section of his bonnet which means no laser would reflect off that. Could the reason why his X50 is not detecting laser have to do with the black bonnet? I refuse to believe its such a coincidence that his X50's laser is malfunctioning. On my car when i had the X50 i never missed a laser hit, even the close range hits i'd still get an alert.