In continuation of our Tech Tuesday series, our very own data visualization intern Nathan Lewis discusses the importance of a military contract with Microsoft and their HoloLens.
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Recently the military well in 2010 2018 in fact uh the military awarded Microsoft a contract to make HoloLens’s and what are HoloLens’s HoloLens’s are mixed reality technology plus thermal imagery sensors GPS technology and night vision capabilities to improve soldiers situational awareness and give them critical information to help plan train and carry out missions so one aspect is the augmented reality uh which will give them better night vision um and that could be used um you know in combat scenarios also if there’s a smoke bomb or there’s a lot of stroke in the area could help them see through that which could be especially dangerous um also it will include virtual reality within the the the headset which will be especially um useful for a soldier to look at like a model of like the terrain they’re about to enter uh thinking about like a building and the entrances to that building um and also the ability to look at a rifle scope through the lens so they don’t have to be as which is both a way for them to use a rifle in the the HoloLens and um have like actually a better aim just generally um but like why is this contract important why do i care about the military ordering virtual reality sets they’re all over already um well this is a 20 billion dollar contract that is a lot of money for the virtual reality space which is still in its early stages um and a contract this big could accelerate research and development for mixed reality um let’s think about past military contracts and how that has accelerated research and development you got NASA being born out of the military a lot of computing modern computing was born from like military necessity um airplane technology and so on and so forth big military contracts have always accelerated research and development um and work in that field also while many people have started to buy virtual reality and augmented reality headsets for themselves um this will accelerate the process uh just like back in the day before personal computers were big IBM was the the biggest computer company because they were selling big companies making contract work and that was what it was accelerating research and development um this will also be very useful in testing right so a combat-ready soldier needs combat-ready gear a lot of problems still occur some things are not perfect i think having a device ready for the military uh ready for them to be in combat it’s just a completely different level of testing that is required and and thoroughness in the headset um which i think will accelerate the the development of new technologies and i hope to see other contracts like this come into place where virtual reality is is becomes more useful and important.