Microsoft Combat Goggles Falter as Congress Says No To Buying More (bloomberg.com) 44
Microsoft won't be getting more orders for its combat goggles anytime soon after Congress rejected the US Army's request for $400 million to buy as many as 6,900 of them this fiscal year. From a report: The rejection of the request, in the $1.75 trillion government funding bill, reflects concern over field tests of the goggles, which are adapted from Microsoft's HoloLens headsets. The tests disclosed "mission-affecting physical impairments" including headaches, eyestrain and nausea.
Instead, lawmakers approved the transfer of $40 million of those procurement funds to develop a new model of the goggles, Army spokesman David Patterson said in an email. Over a decade, the Army projects spending as much as $21.9 billion for as many as 121,000 devices, spares and support services if all options are exercised. It has already ordered the first 5,000 goggles, which will be used for training as the improved model is developed.
Instead, lawmakers approved the transfer of $40 million of those procurement funds to develop a new model of the goggles, Army spokesman David Patterson said in an email. Over a decade, the Army projects spending as much as $21.9 billion for as many as 121,000 devices, spares and support services if all options are exercised. It has already ordered the first 5,000 goggles, which will be used for training as the improved model is developed.
Did I foresee this one too? Yes, I did. (Score:1)
That's +2 to my score this week. And I did it all without time travel.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
(I foresaw you modding me down too, fuckers!)
The ads killed them (Score:1)
Re: The ads killed them (Score:2)
$57,971 Each (Score:3)
Well, that's cheaper than some hammers and toilet seats procured by our military.
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You arrived at the $57,971 unit price by dividing $400million by 6,900, ignoring the "spares and support services" part of the deal. The type and quantity of spares isn't stated, but I would guess that support services, aka user training, post-training support, and setting up depot maintenance facilities probably comes to quite a bit more than the recurring cost of the headsets.
The days of ridiculously overpriced hammers and toilet seats have been over for quite a while, as far as I can tell. The military s
Re: $57,971 Each (Score:2)
they moved to ridiculously overpriced electronics
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The days of ridiculously overpriced hammers and toilet seats have been over for quite a while
they moved to ridiculously overpriced electronics
Shocker: It turns out, that wins wars.
Re: $57,971 Each (Score:2)
20% of this is already overpriced (Score:2)
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Why by 7000 of any tech ? (Score:2)
Buy 1000.
Then repeatedly:
A Year later, buy 1000 more on condition that they improve it based on the last years' experience
Re: Why by 7000 of any tech ? (Score:2)
Military contracts (Score:3)
Only a company as large as Microsoft is going to win these contracts and they're probably not going to be the best/first to get it right.
If there's enough latency that it's causing nausea, then it's too dangerous to use in combat. It doesn't matter if there's optical passthrough if the overlay isn't perfectly matched up. And I don't know what the frame rate of these devices are but I'd be pretty sure it's too low for rapid head movements.
And that's without getting into focal depth. No doubt the overlay is going to be "closer" to you than the object you're looking at. So you would constantly be shifting focus to the foreground for information and taking focus off things in the background that you really may need to keep looking at.
MS calling the tech HoloLens is a joke. Until they can actually generate interference patterns that mimic a light field, a distant subject has to be out of focus to see the overlay. And then they'll have to rebrand because their name had been a lie for too long.
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No doubt the overlay is going to be "closer" to you than the object you're looking at.
Seems like they could fix this with good eye tracking that could tell what distance you were focusing at and adjust the HUD.
In fact that would be a useful ability anyway as they could add additional magnification to instant things you were focusing on.
But that's way more advanced than what they have now.
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Seems like they could fix this with good eye tracking that could tell what distance you were focusing at and adjust the HUD.
Pretty sure the screen hardware cannot change the focus distance of the overlay. At least for the standard HoloLens, they are at a fixed distance of 2 meters.
The ability exists (Score:1)
Pretty sure the screen hardware cannot change the focus distance of the overlay.
Magic Leap could and there is other experimental research [roadtovr.com], so at some point in the future I expect a number of headsets will have this ability.
Not present in HoloLens yet though.
Re: The ability exists (Score:2)
Don't they understand? (Score:5, Insightful)
The only good things Microsoft produces are... erm... yes, what again?
Microsoft is unable to produce things that are capable of functioning in a mission critical environment. Without exception, people avoid Microsoft like the plague when it becomes mission critical. Why? Because Microsoft software/firmware has the tendency to misbehave badly. Of course, the U.S. army is stupid enough to trust a company which consistently has shown to produce crapware.
These combat goggles seem to fail at doing something which is actually quite needed when getting shot at, which are: perform and keep working as expected.
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Actually, Microsoft hardware is (or at least was) pretty darn good.
I've been using Microsoft brand keyboards and mice for years.
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Those are among the worst keyboards and mice ever made. Just because they didn't stop working yet doesn't mean they were ever good.
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> The only good things Microsoft produces are... erm... yes, what again?
Mice.
Black Mirror (Score:2)
Men on fire.
Re: Black Mirror (Score:2)
Men against fire, you moron!
Re: Black Mirror (Score:2)
Improvements, not stasis, are needed. (Score:2)
Troops need effective, constantly improving electronic equipment.
It's silly to freeze capabilities by deploying more beta-tier products.
Hololens is a baby step. Vision systems must constantly improve (see Ukraine for how vital they are in modern combat) as must comms. Effective combined arms is NATOs ace in the hole.
No. Way. (Score:2)
Microsoft will just have to pitch this crap to fulfillment warehouses like Amazon whose workers have zero rights or say in this stuff.
Re: No. Way. (Score:2)
They can make the display "optically far" with the right lensing if that's a problem.
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They can make the display "optically far" with the right lensing if that's a problem.
Then why haven't they?
I could see a G.I. needing to look as close as a few feet in front and as far as the horizon. That's a lot of variation to be able to cover. An overlay-display would need to be able to react to the person's focus-distance changing as fast as the person can change it.
It wouldn't be a surprise if this sort of thing is why the automotive heads-up display fell out of favor. It wasn't like drivers were free from taking their eyes off the road, they still had to refocus to see it. And be
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Re: No. Way. (Score:2)
As someone who now, post cataracts, has two points of focus: infinity, and whatever my reading glasses provide, having the display hang out at a single point of focus could work great if that point is well-chosen. I have a zone that's both too near and too far, and that gets worse in low light. Your natural lenses are probably doing their greatest adjustment there.
Placing the display focus at infinity, while making it large enough to read, small enough not to get in the way would probably work well.
Why have
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Where does infinity start for you though?
Because someone driving is looking thirty, fifty, a hundred, two hundred, five hundred feet away, or should be at least. There's a lot of variability between looking at what's in the intersection you're preparing to cross and looking far down the highway as you're traveling a mile a minute. Or even being able to switch from far down the highway to what's on the shoulder that could intrude into the road.
Re: No. Way. (Score:2)
In bright office light, using no glasses, I've got tack-sharp focus from about 8 feet out to infinity.
Re: No. Way. (Score:2)
I should point out that my implant lenses are not fresnels, have only the infinity focal point. They correct for astigmatism (not sure how. Maybe they're toric?), but that's the only difference from a regular lens.
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Ammo Clippy (Score:3)
Strange wait (Score:3)
This stuff passed the LAST congress as part of the lame-duck session, but they waited until the current congress is seated and goes through its speaker battle before publishing this story.
Did they really take this long to find this story, or need to try and pin it all on the current congress?
Ray Winnegar's Underground (Score:2)
AR is low information overload (Score:2)
Ignoring the glowing helmet problems, solders often need to have much stronger situational awareness than mission awareness. Good comms with a single ATAK for complex resource requests and maybe some Garmin watches for checkpoints are about all they need.