Has anyone noticed that Low light now reigns supreme?
in SR1 - thermographic was the best in 4/5 categories. Natural vision was best in glare.

SR2 gave natural enhancements an edge. IIRC* thermographic(IR) was best overall, while low light was 1 point better in the light of the city streets.

SR3 balanced out IR VS LL, and introduced thermal smoke that made thermographic worse than normal vision. This raised all kinds of questions:
a. Do metahumans have "normal" vision? If not can they gain it through enhancements?
b. How do you "turn off" a vision mode? Can this be done ones natural vision?
c. How do you adjudicate multiple vision modes?

SR4 simplifies things, being reminiscent to SR1. No more advantage to meat eyes. However now LL is better than IR in almost all categories, being about tied with Ultrasound, which is way more expensive. Good thing Trogs and Squats are tough cuz thats a total kick in the nuts. Part of the problem here is theres only one degree of partial light. The issues of switching and disabling multiple vision enhancements remain unresolved.

Of course I have some Ideas, but id like to get some input from Yall first.

*I loaned my SR2 book to a friend who moved and that guy was cool but if I ever go see him its only gonna be to get my book.

SR3, at least in M&M if I recall correctly, mentioned that you can turn off vision modes and layer them all overtop each other so that you have all of them in effect if need be. So, like if you use LL/IR/Normal and no flare compensation and get flared, you would suffer as would LL, which I believe is the worst. And in that setup, I believe they mentioned metas getting normal vision mode, as well as these enhanced modes.

Don't have my books so I can't cite passages.

Yep. they all overlay in an entopic display. no need for switching. you can any one of them off if you want to. you can adjust the parameters ergonomicaly--almost subconcously--as ealily as crossing your eyes. It's all free actions. not having flare comp is dumb.

Oh, and mechanicaly you use the best modifier of all your active systems for perception tests.

That's true, though it doesn't make much sense with penalties that come from seeing 'too much' (flare, thermal smoke).