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Microsoft Wins $480 Million Military Contract To Bring HoloLens To Battlefield (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Microsoft has won a $480 million contract to develop an augmented reality system for use in combat and military training for the U.S. Army. Called Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS), formerly Heads Up Display (HUD) 3.0, the goal of the project is to develop a headset that gives soldiers -- both in training and in combat -- an increase in "Lethality, Mobility, and Situational Awareness." The ambitions for the project are high. Authorities want to develop a system with a goggle or visor form factor -- nothing mounted on a helmet -- with an integrated 3D display, digital cameras, ballistic laser, and hearing protection. The system should provide remote viewing of weapon sights to enable low risk, rapid target acquisition, perform automated or assisted target acquisition, integrate both thermal and night vision cameras, track soldier vitals such as heart and breathing rates, and detect concussions. Over the course of IVAS's development, the military will order an initial run of 2,550 prototypes, with follow-on production possibly in excess of 100,000 devices.
Employees won't be forced to work on the contract.
Missile ready 3...2....1.....(windows needs to reboot to install updates) WTF!!?!
Just when china thought they had an edge on vaporware tech....
Are you that in love with trump that you have to bring him up in every conversation?
Sensor fusion takes lots of power and code to come up with a product that someone in a high-stress environment can understand and act on. It also has to degrade gracefully or GTFOTW when its not operating properly. You can't blue-screen during a fire-fight. I don't know if Microsoft is the right choice for this. They make all their money in the "eh, close enough" product space. If this is purely a tech experiment/tech PoC project, OK.
Early in my career I worked for a military contractor (not bombs or anything.) Building military grade hardware isn't easy.
And with with such stellar successes as Zune and Windows Phone under their belts I'm not sure I have a lot of confidence in their ability to deliver. They may make decent keyboards and mice; this isn't going to be like that.
This will be interesting to watch
/me goes to make popcorn.
Why does this make me immediately think of the VATS system?
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
It brings a new meaning to âoeBlue Screen of Deathâ.
Clippy: I see you're trying to shoot someone. Would you like to see where the best place to shoot them might be?
FUCK YOU RACIST!
"Hololens is rebooting to install downloaded updates"
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Value-Added markeTing System, otherwise known as win10
Funny, how at the very same time, Microsoft starts a "petition for digital peace": https://digitalpeace.microsoft...
What they actually want to say is: "Cyber-war should be waged only be the US institutions that we deliver to. We do not want you to compete."
Now we can have a literal blue screen of death
2,550 devices for $480 million, is $188,235 apiece.
Sometimes I'm amazed that we can waste so much money.
Microsoft will be helping kill people and destroy their property. The abuse of Windows 10 was not enough?
Half a billion gone just like that and we still don't have a single credible threat to our military. We've got 19 air craft carriers. China has 1. That they got from Russia if memory serves. Oh wait, they've got two now. Woopee. Meanwhile I don't have reliable access to medicine.
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Nobody believes the tech is ready, but they still granted the contract.
Guess what they got in exchange for it.
BSOD sort of takes on new meaning here.
Integrated Visual AugmentatioN System .... IVANS.
Have gnu, will travel.
Wasn't Magic Leap counting on that sweet DOD nectar? Methinks this is the first nail in the coffin for them.
Half a billion gone just like that and we still don't have a single credible threat to our military. We've got 19 air craft carriers. China has 1. That they got from Russia if memory serves. Oh wait, they've got two now. Woopee. Meanwhile I don't have reliable access to medicine.
That's not a good measure of a military. Aircraft Carriers are almost obsolete at this point. If you don't understand why, you shouldn't call youself a nerd.
... a decent goddam F-35.
Lockheed Martin failed where FlightSim might have had a chance and stuff.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I actually feel bad about this as a taxpayer. Not because of "ethics" or whatever, but because Hololens is a total useless piece of shit. I've used it myself, it's not even a "toy", it's totally useless even in that context. I'm having a hard time imagining anything useful the taxpayers are buying with this half a billion dollars.
"Oh...............fuck."
(I live in the U.S.)
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
and it had nothing to do with taking care of old people and everything to do with bloody laws that prevent us from negotiating drug prices.
Oh, and for my $1 trillion I get something (the old and poor taken care of). For the $600 billion (that we know of) we spent on the army last year all I got was a news story about us dropping a $21 million dollar bomb on some goat herders with old Russian AK47s. Sad thing is that when our president ordered it his poll numbers shot up. I suppose that's from guys like you?
Seriously, this isn't defense. It's empire. But I don't even get cheap gas for all that empire building. Screw war. It's a bad deal for everyone but the folks at the top pulling our strings and lying about bone spurs.
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Clown Fuck.
Special forces will say what the money should be spent on best. As they have ears and eyes and are alert, better boots may be the top of the list. No way will a VR headset beat drone cameras or a top forward placed sniper team.
Sounds like some committee with no combat experience like these VR sim games, and aim to have teenagers do things shown in the 'Lost in space' movie or starwars. My bet is enhanced feedback squeel and wireless docking and camo colored charges will be what 1/2 a billion actually buys.
Its no secret that the #1 best enhancement is military versions of 'stay awake and alert' drugs otherwise sold by your local dope peddlar.
Xbox Next X is going to have some really "killer" games...
If we had tight borders (including kicking out those who didn't belong), we probably wouldn't have spent this money on these dead end "wars", as 9/11 could have been prevented.
Do you have an extra weird looking dildo that looks like Trump?
I know it's a faux pas to accuse folks of racism, but IIRC the 9/11 hijackers were here legally and we knew they were preparing a terrorist attack. Our illustrious police forces decided to "let the fish swim" so to speak. Then it came time for Bush Jr to be re-elected and he'd fucked up pretty bad so he dragged us into war with Iraq to get re-elected. Don't forget, the two countries we went to war with (and the 6 we added later) did not attack us. The hijackers were Saudis, but they were carefully escorted out of the country post 9/11 by Bush Jr...
Seriously, kick all the Mexicans you want out of the country. They're not committing acts of terror. Tight borders won't fix anything. Unless by "tight borders" you really mean "White Christians only". In which case say so.
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The Army didn't want this in 2004 when I tried to sell it to them.
And I was going to do it with nowhere near a $480M bill, and I'm pretty sure with my nerd+infantry background it would probably still be better than what Microsoft makes for them.
Oh well.