Agreed. The "night vision goggles" I've always wanted are a) a thermal imaging camera, and b) whatever it is the military means when they say "night vision goggles".
The up- and downside of night vision (vs thermal vision) is that you are amplifying visible light, so what you see is mostly similar to what you would see with unaided in brighter ambient light.
Yep, as I understand it, at least the 2nd Gen tubes have a surface that turns incoming photons into electrons, then those electrons bounce around inside tiny "micro channels" with a high voltage applied to them, which causes more electrons to bounce down the tube. And then they hit a phosphor screen and turn back into photons.
It's really quite clever.