Tallsar - yes an excellent post - some of that history I had forgotten and some I had never learned.
Ropedope - do read the bit about the twin hoist, then you can apologise for not mentioning Dave Bullock in your rant
Bootneck - there are plenty of projects trying to address the shortcomings of NVG but most will be cutting edge military research (by mil or on behalf of), therefore very expensive and unlikely to be seen widespread for a few years. I saw a set of wideangle NVG a few years ago but don't know what became of that project.
DNVG, where flight data is projected onto the eyepice is in use already but not in milsar. The problem comes when you need to winch since the visual acuity of an NVG picture (typically 20:35 or 20:40) is not sharp enough for really accurate hovering compared to the (20:20 ish) human eye on white light and the lack of peripheral vision shows up as uncorrected drifting.