The hour hand is extremely difficult to distinguish apart from the date window at night time within night vision mode.
So much so, I thought the time was stuck in an infinite loop on the server, between 02:45 and 03:15 due to this optical illusion.
If I'm not mistaken during the day time, one can subtlety distinguish the hour hand apart from the date window without much effort. At night time, almost impossible to distinguish the difference.
Very likely, adding some highlighting or glowing, or simulating other reflective material on the hour and minute hands will provide adequate contrast.
Notice, most watch manufacturers already provide excellent contrast for the hour and minute hands, as they realize the primary reason for watches are to be able to tell time! (ie. See Watch Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watch and notice the level of contrast of the hands on the watches within the images. Notice, very little confusion as to where the hands are pointing.)
FYI: I usually fly with the watch within view, along with placing explosives for timing their detonation.
I remember older watches had date bars like the one used within ARMA 3. But like I said, think the date bar fine and just need to add some graphic contrast to the hands. Such as reflectivity or glow effects to the hands only, to set them apart from the rest of the watch body.
Please let us know if you are still able to reproduce this issue in latest developement build.
I speculated there was a slight tinting performed on the hands of the wristband on the previous developer patch, but figured to allow you to first confirm as I didn't notice the change within the Developer Change Log.
If you did, I can now subtly notice a definite tinted difference between the hands and the date bar of the watch now. And if so, I think new comers to the game, or those that first start using the watch, should now not be so easily confusing the 03:00-0:400 time phenomenon during night time.
Suggest marking as closed?
I just noticed the minute and hour hands do blend into and look as one hand when overlapping.
But 1980's manufacturing quality and earlier, it was quite common the hands would blend as one hand when overlapping. Nowadays, I have no idea the quality of watches made. I really doubt this later issue needs to be dealt with, as us older folks are quite well accustomed to this "only one hand" anomaly. ;-)
I'll let somebody file a separate bug, or provide a mod for it. Think most went to using digitized watches.