The ancestors of mammalkind skulked in the dark and traded colors for the ability to see in the shadows. Three basic colors give humans the ability to distinguish around ten million colors, which is as good as mammals get. Bird ancestors walked in the light, and pigeons have improved on that front. Five basic colors give intelligent pigeons the ability to distinguish ten billion colors. They have the best color vision of anything with a spine.
Just looking at someone - skin oils, blood vessels under the skin, hair, fingernails, teeth, insects, traces of wiped away or evaporated saliva/tears/sweat/blood/cum/whatever, makeup, soaps, dyes and detergents used on clothing, scar tissue. Julien sees these in brighter, more obvious colors than what we see, if we'd see it at all. Hand and foot prints, anywhere skin oil could have transfered, are obvious. Stars are visible in the day, the sun can be seen through clouds, and air turbulence is watchable.
The big downside is, well, poorer vision in low light. Not enough to be crippling, but night blindness can certainly suck. The darker it is the less color there is, and "too dark to see" isn't as dark as for humans.
With bird eyes Julien can also see faster. What's a blur to humans... often isn't to birds, so he can track things better and move more rapidly through obstacles - though the downside there is that the flickering of fluorescent lights and the artificiality of video are much more obvious. Watching something from the "corner of his eye" gets an image almost as sharp as looking directly at it. Pupils can contract and dilate much faster than ours, this can be consciously controlled but also reflects emotion and concentration.
He also has flecks of iron in his eyes, interfacing somehow with his optic nerves and letting him "see" magnetic fields. With just the eyes this magnetic sense isn't as refined as it would get if I gave him the other iron flecks, it's just a vague indication of direction.
For now Julien keeps the mammalian spherical eye shape and ability to move his eyes that humans have, since... otherwise his skull would need restructuring. Unlike with pigeons the whites of his eyes are still visible, and he keeps the blue pigments in his eyes... though the color's not quite the same, and blood vessels in the iris might make the eyes look purple during periods of eyestrain. And he gets the brain modifications to actually handle all this new input, and he no longer needs glasses day to day, though his visual resolution's a little shy of 20/20.
Finally he has nictitating membranes (translucent extra eyelids that protect and clean the eye, can work as "sunglasses", and also show emotion) and a modified sclerotic ring (eye bone). Cause: Witnessing a Vermini swarm
no subject
Change: Pigeonlike eyes.
The ancestors of mammalkind skulked in the dark and traded colors for the ability to see in the shadows. Three basic colors give humans the ability to distinguish around ten million colors, which is as good as mammals get. Bird ancestors walked in the light, and pigeons have improved on that front. Five basic colors give intelligent pigeons the ability to distinguish ten billion colors. They have the best color vision of anything with a spine.
Just looking at someone - skin oils, blood vessels under the skin, hair, fingernails, teeth, insects, traces of wiped away or evaporated saliva/tears/sweat/blood/cum/whatever, makeup, soaps, dyes and detergents used on clothing, scar tissue. Julien sees these in brighter, more obvious colors than what we see, if we'd see it at all. Hand and foot prints, anywhere skin oil could have transfered, are obvious. Stars are visible in the day, the sun can be seen through clouds, and air turbulence is watchable.
The big downside is, well, poorer vision in low light. Not enough to be crippling, but night blindness can certainly suck. The darker it is the less color there is, and "too dark to see" isn't as dark as for humans.
With bird eyes Julien can also see faster. What's a blur to humans... often isn't to birds, so he can track things better and move more rapidly through obstacles - though the downside there is that the flickering of fluorescent lights and the artificiality of video are much more obvious. Watching something from the "corner of his eye" gets an image almost as sharp as looking directly at it. Pupils can contract and dilate much faster than ours, this can be consciously controlled but also reflects emotion and concentration.
He also has flecks of iron in his eyes, interfacing somehow with his optic nerves and letting him "see" magnetic fields. With just the eyes this magnetic sense isn't as refined as it would get if I gave him the other iron flecks, it's just a vague indication of direction.
For now Julien keeps the mammalian spherical eye shape and ability to move his eyes that humans have, since... otherwise his skull would need restructuring. Unlike with pigeons the whites of his eyes are still visible, and he keeps the blue pigments in his eyes... though the color's not quite the same, and blood vessels in the iris might make the eyes look purple during periods of eyestrain. And he gets the brain modifications to actually handle all this new input, and he no longer needs glasses day to day, though his visual resolution's a little shy of 20/20.
Finally he has nictitating membranes (translucent extra eyelids that protect and clean the eye, can work as "sunglasses", and also show emotion) and a modified sclerotic ring (eye bone).
Cause: Witnessing a Vermini swarm