# The incompatibility of invisibility with vision **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 18, 2026, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-incompatibility-of-invisibility-with-vision/1026802 "2026-01-18T17:17:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2026, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-incompatibility-of-invisibility-with-vision/1026802/21 "2026-01-18T21:36:44Z")
> [@eburacum45](#): > > think there could be an ultra-high-tech solution to this; if the invisible man were wearing a cloak covered in tiny cameras which could record the surrounding scenery, then emit a detailed picture using tiny coloured LEDs on the opposite side of the cloak, you could have a kind of invisibility that allows you to monitor the local environment in detail without having visible eyes. That’s basically the premise of 2020’s _The Invisible Man_. Not a cloak, but a full body suit. Well, really the premise was to explore “What sort of man would build such a thing?” as contrasted against the more traditional “How would becoming invisible change such a man?” Anyway, if one could build such a suit, creating an internal HUD to allow the cameras to also display an image of what is outside of the suit would be trivial. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2026, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-incompatibility-of-invisibility-with-vision/1026802/22 "2026-01-19T14:48:37Z")
> [@markn\_1](#): > > it wouldn’t work at all for at least some of the viewers. That’s why I liked the Predator invisibility system. It somehow (wizard?) bends light around him but it can still be seen as distortion. Functionally, it is awesome stealth. If you stay still in a complex background you’re virtually invisible. But don’t move until they’ve stopped looking at you! As for the OP, it works the other way, too. Lets say somehow the eye still focuses light onto your retina, like most movies and TV shows do it. Then, if you saw the invisible man from the back, there are two black circles floating in space where his retinae are. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2026, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-incompatibility-of-invisibility-with-vision/1026802/23 "2026-01-19T15:00:21Z")
Yeah, you’d need a mesh of cameras and a mesh of little projectors so the angle and other properties of the incoming light could be preserved and reproduced on the other side. You’d also need to compute the paths of the rays in real time because it’s not as simple as just projecting everything that comes in at one point, out from the exact opposite point - for example light hitting a point on your right shoulder may have to exit from your left shoulder, or if you lean over, from your neck, or if you turn a little, from your chest, etc. Repeat for every ray of light hitting every part of the body, from every direction, taking into account the position and every small movement of every part of the body. I’m not saying that makes it impossible, but it is a huge undertaking and is glossed over in movies and other fiction when this type of cloak is mentioned. Die Another Day, I’m looking at you. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2026, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-incompatibility-of-invisibility-with-vision/1026802/24 "2026-01-19T15:02:20Z")
This is where Douglas Adams got it right; you just need to project a field that makes people think the object is _Somebody Else’s Problem_ - and they’ll never see it. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2026, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-incompatibility-of-invisibility-with-vision/1026802/25 "2026-01-19T15:09:49Z")
That’s how most modern fantasy stories handle invisibility - as an illusion that fools the minds of observers, either making them look the other way, making them not care or simply erasing the invisible person from their minds. It’s much easier than messing with the laws of physics. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2026, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-incompatibility-of-invisibility-with-vision/1026802/26 "2026-01-19T15:58:14Z")
Or like _Mystery Men_, where the guy could only be invisible as long as no one was looking at him. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2026, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-incompatibility-of-invisibility-with-vision/1026802/27 "2026-01-19T16:04:06Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > One thing you could do is also wear a device that lets you see in infrared or ultraviolet; if the invisibility effect doesn’t extend that far into the spectrum you could still see (and be seen) that way. And hiding yourself in infrared is extra-hard anyway, since after all we outright _glow_ in infrared. That’s how the Sue Storm knockoff does it in PLANETARY. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2026, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-incompatibility-of-invisibility-with-vision/1026802/28 "2026-01-19T16:08:56Z")
> [@eburacum45](#): > > I think there could be an ultra-high-tech solution to this; if the invisible man were wearing a cloak covered in tiny cameras which could record the surrounding scenery, then emit a detailed picture using tiny coloured LEDs on the opposite side of the cloak, you could have a kind of invisibility that allows you to monitor the local environment in detail without having visible eyes. This. There are many ways, conceptually, to make an object invisible, many of which don’t require interfering with the subject’s vision. I have a book _The Science of Science Fiction_ that goes into detail not just about blindness but also the challenge of having blood cells with the refractive index of air, concluding that invisibility is impossible. It always struck me as a “I know a thing” objection i.e. “I know a fact, so it must be relevant and critically important”. Not to threadshit though. It’s an interesting premise for a story; of having invisibility come with the side effect of blindness. In fact, powers coming with tradeoffs, is quite underserved in general IMO. ---
**Author:** ![ParallelLines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/parallellines/32/3575_2.png) [@ParallelLines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParallelLines)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2026, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-incompatibility-of-invisibility-with-vision/1026802/29 "2026-01-19T20:02:46Z")
A personal if deeply flawed favorite, [The Invisible Man / I-man](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invisible_Man_(2000_TV_series)) series (two seasons on Syfy) dealt with it. Originally, the scientists doing the work wasn’t sure how vision would be resolved or affected, but the first\* human trials showed that a side effect of the process “shifted” the spectrum of light seen to outside the normal visible spectrum (presumably UV). Of course, that means the subject IS also visible in the UV and IR spectrums, which is a point anytime they want the protagonist to have to struggle more. (\*) - more be spoilers, but not worried much for a tv series from 2000. It’s free to watch on the Roku channel, and I find it fun, so I won’t go further. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2026, 11:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-incompatibility-of-invisibility-with-vision/1026802/30 "2026-01-20T11:32:55Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > As for the OP, it works the other way, too. Lets say somehow the eye still focuses light onto your retina, like most movies and TV shows do it. Then, if you saw the invisible man from the back, there are two black circles floating in space where his retinae are. Hmm. If the process makes the retina more sensitive to light then they could be only translucent circles, rather than black which would help. ---
**Author:** ![dorvann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df705f/32.png) [@dorvann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dorvann)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2026, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-incompatibility-of-invisibility-with-vision/1026802/31 "2026-01-20T14:49:02Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > It somehow (wizard?) bends light around him That is how The Invisible Woman’s (of the Fantastic Four) powers were described as working. She would psionically generate force fields that bend visible light around her. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2026, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-incompatibility-of-invisibility-with-vision/1026802/32 "2026-01-20T15:12:55Z")
> [@markn\_1](#): > > Do you know of any other works, either by de Camp or others, in which this issue is mentioned? There was a Marvel comic circa 1960 that had a Steve Ditko comic in which the Bad Guy gets a formula for invisibility, but after taking it realizes that the rest of the word became invisible to HIM. Dito didn’t explain it scientifically, but this is what would happen if you removed the index-differing cornea and lens, decolored the sclera, and made light pass through the retina – the completely invisible man would necessarily be functionally blind. The obvious solution is to not be completely invisible. Glass fish achieve almost invisibility in the way H.G. Wells described the invisible man does – by rendering almost all bodily tissues transparent and by nearly matching the refractive index of their surroundings. But glass fish aren’t completely invisible, and their eyes certainly aren’t. “Invisible fish” can see, at the cost of having visible eyes. > **[Kryptopterus bicirrhis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kryptopterus_bicirrhis)** > > Kryptopterus bicirrhis, often called the glass catfish, is an Asian glass catfish species of the genus Kryptopterus. Until 1989, the concept of K. bicirrhis included its smaller relative Kryptopterus vitreolus ("ghost catfish"; often confused with K. minor). Its scientific name K. bicirrhis and common name glass catfish are often still used in the aquarium fish trade to refer to the actual K. vitreolus; as it seems, the larger and more aggressive true K. bicirrhis was only ever exported in insi... ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2026, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-incompatibility-of-invisibility-with-vision/1026802/33 "2026-01-20T19:34:34Z")
Brennan Lee Mulligan had a pretty good take on this during an episode of Critical Role: Calamity, when one of his players rolled really well on a check to notice an invisible NPC: [![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ODgncMuS5Xg/hqdefault.jpg "Brennan's Take on Invisibility | Critical Role") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODgncMuS5Xg) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-incompatibility-of-invisibility-with-vision/1026802.md?page=1)