Though Ohio State looked at many different shapes and colors, they settled on a new SMV design similar to the old one. A fluorescent yellow-orange center portion still provides the best daytime visibility. A red reflective border best highlights the center in the day, and conveys a danger message at night. Though color and shape stay the same, performance improves dramatically. The major difference will be nighttime reflectivity of the border.
New materials are many times more effective than was specified for SMVs in the past.
However, these beads scatter some of the light. From a typical sight distance at night, the glass bead material has a brightness of one-tenth the microprism material. At Ohio State, test panels of students evaluated the various SMVs. The benefit of improved reflectivity is that SMVs are visible further away. Standards require current emblems to be visible at 600 feet.