The design process involves trading-off different factors, including colour, contrast and overall disruptive effect. While digital patterns are becoming widespread, critics maintain that the pixellated look is a question of fashion rather than function. The pixellated style, however, simplifies design and eases printing on fabric, compared to traditional patterns. Neither pixellation nor digitization contribute to the camouflaging effect. The term is sometimes also used of computer generated patterns like the non-pixellated MultiCam and the Italian fractal Vegetato pattern. When a pattern is called digital, this most often means that it is visibly composed of computer-generated pixels. Operational Camouflage Pattern, a disruptive but non-pixellated pattern, replacing the Universal Camouflage Pattern in 2015 This was followed by the Canadian development of the Canadian Disruptive Pattern ( CADPAT), first issued in 2002, and then with US work which created the Marine pattern ( MARPAT), launched between 20. The root of the modern multi-scale camouflage patterns can be traced back to 1930s experiments in Europe for the German and Soviet armies. The first standardized pattern to be issued was the single-scale Italian telo mimetico. Further, not all pixellated patterns work at different scales, so being pixellated or digital does not of itself guarantee improved performance. Not all multiscale patterns are composed of rectangular pixels, even if they were designed using a computer. The function is to provide camouflage over a range of distances, or equivalently over a range of scales (scale-invariant camouflage), in the manner of fractals, so some approaches are called fractal camouflage. Multi-scale camouflage is a type of military camouflage combining patterns at two or more scales, often (though not necessarily) with a digital camouflage pattern created with computer assistance.

The Canadian Forces were the first army to issue pixellated digital multi-scale camouflage for all units with their disruptively patterned CADPAT, issued in 2002, shown here in its 'Temperate Woodland' variant.

Digital camo