Microsoft HoloLens finds second home in the military after failing battlefield tests

The US Army's attempt to turn Microsoft HoloLens headsets into battlefield kit may have failed, but the AR goggles aren't going into the garbage. Instead, they're being repurposed for remote cargo inspection support. When it comes to ensuring that pallets of military equipment are properly load-balanced for air transport, …

[Inventor of the Marmite Laser]

Hi. I'm Clippy

It looks like you're tying something down. Would you like me to tell you how to get knotted?

[Taliesinawen]

Battlefield kit ..

Damp and dust, heat and cold, extreme environmental conditions are a good test.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Surely it's cheaper

To outsource it to some private air freight company with no qualified personnel

[Anonymous Coward]

New, Old Applications of this Tech

Someone's gonna use it to make porn. The movie director will be giving directions to the goggles-wearer/cameraperson, and those directions will be part of the porn-video's soundtrack.

"Pan right ... tilt up ... traverse up ... hold ... now rock it a bit ... oh, yeah, just like that ..."

[Paul Hovnanian]

Re: New, Old Applications of this Tech

This.

But like the X-Ray glasses they used to sell in the back pages of comic books. But now tied to a Grok image processor.

[xyz]

Hope the WiFi password isn't...

passw0rd otherwise someone will have fun

[Roland6]

Do the goggles stay with the plane?

This all sounds nice, only problem I can see is ensuring there is a set of (working) goggles wherever and whenever a plane needs loading.

Also, whilst I can see the goggles could give the best user experience, could similar be achieved through the use of a smartphone/go-pro in a headband.

[ecofeco]

LOL

Oh this will end well.

[Anonymous Coward]

As the mission critical cargo arrives...

The device decides to perform an OS Update that surprise, surprise... takes hours.

These things are a big single point of failure if there is no backup plan in place.

[Gurhurk]

Latency causes barfing

These issues are caused by latency. AR/VR makes you sick if the rendering takes too long compared to the eye/brain latency. It's called the barfogenic effect and is the same thing as travel sickness. You need low-latency edge compute to solve this

[Anonymous Coward]

Lest we forget

In the late 1980s I was assigned to the 62d Aerial Port Squadron, part of the 62d Airlift Wing at McChord AFB. We worked very closely with our brothers and sisters down Interstate 5 at Fort Lewis on cross training for deployments around the Pacific Rim. I'm sure that my successors at Joint Base Lewis-McChord team up even more closely. Perhaps the author of this piece should get back in the field and overcome their misconceptions about Airmen and Soldiers working together.

[Stuart Castle]

I purchased (well, not me personally) a couple of Hololenses for work.

The tech is good, and it is an interesting gadget, but tbh, it has always seemed to be an expensive solution looking for a problem. IIRC, the consumer version was over £1000, which is what you pay for a high end consumer VR headset for something that isn't as useful. The enterprise edition is the same hardware, running essentially the same software (Windows Holographic), but adds the ability to integrate with Active Directory and be managed by System Center. It is also over £3k.