$1m for seethrough vidspecs in DARPA VR war-graffiti plan

Brobdingnagian arms company Lockheed yesterday passed on a million of its government greenbacks in a subcontract aimed at helping it achieve a new standard in interface tech. The cash goes to Washington-based Microvision Inc to develop "daylight-readable, see-through, low-profile, ergonomic" colour video specs. DARPA photo …

[Bryn Evans]

WarGamers ReUnited

The spin off from these glasses should go down well with the games community -

But beware Nerds in Glasses making excited gestures in the streets !

[E 2]

The real application...

will match the iPod compatible sound systems in the APCs and tanks: now, along with listening screaming death metal the occupiers will be able to watch porn while fragging brown-ish people.

[Ryan 7]

As seen on:

Space Marines! In every film and FPS I've ever seen them in!

[Martin Lyne]

I hope

I hope they get this sorted soon, then when playing ArmA3/Operation Flashpoint 3 in hard mode I'll still be allowed to visually see where a team-mate has located an enemy.

In OP1 they had a nice little clock face show up relative to the person calling out the info that rotated along with you. Now in ArmA2 they say "person, far to the left", which, when you're looking at the horizon and turning continuously anyway, is near useless: their left, my left? If theirs, where were they facing when they said it? But when in vehicles they use NESW, much more useful. C'mon..

[Mussie (Ed)]

At this rate

They will soon be hiring 15 year olds to fight wars remotely.....

[Fluffykins]

See through specs! What next?

Drive-in carparks?

[Georgees]

Augmented reality..

To give it its proper name.

[Graham Bartlett]

Sci-fi writers

"described by sci-fi writers too numerous to mention here"

But Charles Stross's book "Halting State" probably deserves special recognition. Neal Stephenson was probably the first to portray augmented-reality properly, with the "gargoyle" systems in "Snow Crash". Stross took this concept into the mobile-phone era.

Almost all other sci-fi takes on this (including Space-Marine-type stuff) have just been head-up displays, not actually augmented-reality.

[jj 5]

Gibson fanboi

@ Graham Bartlett -

Lets not forget the grandaddy - Gibson's specs in Virtual Light et al.

[Graham Bartlett]

@JJ5

Mebbe so, but IIRC Gibson's specs (and indeed Stephenson's Metaverse equivalents) were all just an immersive alternative to monitors, not overlays or augmentations on the real world. I think Stephenson's "gargoyles" were the first major reference to linking cameras, glasses/goggles and online databases, and automatic identification and geolocation overlays based on hooking those all together. But Stephenson has gargoyles lugging around loads of clunky crap connected by wires, where Stross is looking more at the model of people today having a tiny phone in their pocket and an earpiece/mic worn permanently, with the two connected by Bluetooth and using voice recognition.

[Bounty]

awwww

come on.. it's not 'augmented reality' it's a "realitied display"