With regards to flare, I saw no peripheral "crescent" flares which would indicate the sun coming close to the FOV. But paradoxically quite a lot of veiling glare when viewing against the sun. Probably less than in Swarovision but more than in EDG. With the Ultravid it was sometimes almost vice versa, despite strong crescent flares image center was sometimes cleaner than in the Noctivid. This is the one big caveat with the Noctivid for me.
Your second remark is very much appreciated and casts light on modern trends - why flat field binoculars need wider FOVs...?!
Still I don´t quite get it.
- What does AMD mean?
- Compression of objects towards field edge... ??? Of course that would explain the impression of wider FOV and more dimensionality. But:
Normal distortion type is pincushion, that should magnify/widen objects towards the edges of the field, not compress them. Could that be counterbalanced by field curvature?? Where does the compression come from, from which aberrations?
Zeiss SF if I remember correctly has mustache distortion which would explain good dimensionality despite flat field. Barrel distortion would bulge out objects in the center and draw them away from the background. Pincushion should push objects in the middle further away from the foreground.
I started to hate the Canon 16-35/4, an almost perfect wide-angle zoom. It´s images look just way too flat. In binocular world, flat images, IMO that would be Swarovision and maybe Nikon EDG, but not the Noctivid, neither the SF.