Exactly our conclusions.
Close eye relief (18mm or so) gives a larger retinal image size of the NVG picture than does an extended eye relief of greater than say 30mm, but it gives no appreciable increase in FOV of the image.
For Mil Ops with only the NVG image to rely on, the image size was of great importance as it was the only source of external references. For Civ Ops, you are more likely to be hovering off unaided references, thus the retinal image size (of the NVG image) is not as critical - the unaided references are. Accordingly, what becomes of more importance is getting the NVG eye relief sufficient that you can hover off the white light references without being too distracted. Unfortunately, all the books that come with the NVG say that eye relief should be 18 to 25mm.
After a lot of recent NVG white light hovering I have found that the brain is capable of giving a clear unaided image even with the goggles still in the operational position - but I am talking about 40 odd hours of hovering in a month! I am curious as to the cause of this, and am wondering how it connects to the vision phenomena Apache pilots have to master to run different eyes on different tasks.