Active camouflage

Active camouflage or adaptive camouflage is a category of stealth technologies designed to conceal an object from visual detection by adapting to its surroundings. This can be accomplished by a wide range of techniques, from light-sensitive smart paints which mimic surrounding textures and ambient lighting to exotic light-bending lensing fields.

UNSC
The United Nations Space Command, and human militaries in general, have long utilized basic forms of adaptive camouflage. These simple forms have classically taken the form of programmable nanoprismatic paints capable of cycling between a select set of variant textures, and primitive photoreactive paints that adjust their brightness to the ambient light level. The Insurrection and the Human-Covenant War have seen a number of advances in these technologies, from early experiments with adaptative camouflage fabrics to the sophisticated photoreactive coating used in the Semi-Powered Infiltration armor.

Adaptive-texture coatings
The conventional option for active camouflage, adaptive-texture coatings use malleable OLED displays or electrophoretic ink in conjunction with light-sensitive cells or miniaturized cameras to project an image of an object's background. The obvious drawback of such systems is that while superior to conventional camouflage, they are only truly effective if the camouflaging effect can be oriented relative to observers, specifically enemies. In addition, the different ways different species perceive light and color showed early adaptive camouflage fabrics to be ineffective, with the Kig-Yar, for example, being easily able to spot UNSC combatants in such camouflage due to the ways their electrophoretic pigments render colors. Still, types of adaptive camouflage retain a niche in the UNSC military, mostly among special forces.

Photoreactive coatings
Photoreactive coating is an advanced metamaterial composed of a mutable nanocrystalline lattice that guides light and other electromagnetic radiation around an object, effectively concealing it from view. A powerful central computer linked to the coating is used to control the geometry of the lattice and further compensate for the distortions relative to observers. While highly effective, photoreactive coating remained prohibitively expensive due to the lack of mass-manufacturing infrastructure until well into the 2560s. Similar photoreactive coatings have since been adopted by a number of other armor systems, including the UNSC Army's Project LOKI infiltration suits. The main advantage of photoreactive coatings over Covenant active camouflage systems is their comparative energy-efficiency, enabling their use over a much longer duration with minimal power drain. As a result, most UNSC research and development since the war has been geared toward improving native photoreactive technologies over reverse-engineering the power-hungry Covenant active camo.

Covenant
Based on Forerunner technology, the Covenant's preeminent active camouflage or cloaking technologies are not based on special surface coatings at all, but rather the highly advanced manipulation of gravitic lensing fields used to bend light around the object. Due to the immense energy requirements of the process, most Covenant active camouflage can only be used for a short duration.