Magic Leap Is Bidding on an Army Combat Contract | Hacker News Reader

Magic Leap Is Bidding on an Army Combat Contract

bloomberg.com

33 pointsmmaanniisshh15 comments

Americans need this technology to gain widespread military application in order to make all of the Tactical Flashlights we bought on the Internet useful as a countermeasure.

Similar goggles are used by armored vehicle crews to get better situational awareness the users won’t necessarily be exposed.

Also flashlight in the dark is very good against a mark one eyeball and even better against a mark one eye ball augmented with night vision without good flash protection.

Virtually every military has already adopted a technology that can be easily defeated with a bright light they still use it because it’s better than the alternative and a bright light is a very good way of ensuring that your enemies know exactly where to aim their tracers at which is why you don’t tend to use flashlights in combat to defeat night vision because for every bloke you temporarily blind there will be 10 shooting at you the moment you turn it on.

I guess they can hire the Theranos board to move this forward....

Just because Magic Leap hasn't really delivered on a mind blowing consumer product doesn't mean they can't create something great for military use.

Google Glass just wasn't cool enough or useful enough to become the next iPhone but it did very well for certain applications.

If Drone Pilots could use Magic Leap headsets to pull in ANY useful information to their field of view while flying a mission it would be a step forward the military would be happy to pay for.

AR company bidding on HMD contracts who would’ve thought...

Seems like a legit use case.

Sorry but- after the JSF debacle- is this not already a dead duck? Honestly- on a battlefield, everything in addition you want has to be unobtrusive, totally intuitive and non-view obstructing. The last thing you want after a IDE has blown up, to see MS Clippy hoping through the wreckage, producing friendly fire.

Just take the integrated battlefield promised with the JSF, generating more Noise then usage. Im sure, you could add something similar in theory to a FPS, basically estimating the position of a retreating shooter.

But why bother and risk - when some well placed mortars will do that?

Just because it looked good in scifi movies, doesent mean its good in reality.

Only parties that could benefit from this, are specialists- meaning, drone-flights, commanding officers and upgraded personal- (medics in need for direct instructions by a doctor) - even those could usually be easier given without the AR.

And thats from someone who is a huge AR fan. Maybe im overlooking some benefits- i would really appreciate some usecases - if i missed them.

Maybe non-obstructive collaborative battlefield annotations would be helpful?

I don't know why he was flagged to death, but I think Pica_soO was spot on. Regardless of anyone's opinion of whether they should bid for the contract or not, none of the AR headsets publicly available, definitely including Magic Leap's, seems anywhere near good enough for what the Army needs...

So what? God forbid a tech company not based in SV contribute to the defense of Western values!

“Western values” is such a propaganda term. We overthrow democratic governments in S. America because it suits “our” needs and have caused nothing but chaos in the Middle East for the last.. century?

We need high tech companies to buy into “values” lie so we can continue to dominate the rest of the world and spy on all of western civilization.

EDIT: maybe you’re joking? Its hard to tell these days, if so A+ job.

western values haven't been particularly defensive in the past

Is there such a thing as western values? Hemispheres are pretty big diverse places.

Defending them from whom exactly?

Ahhh.... I know this one from Jeopardy.

That would be "Terrorists who hate our Freedom" for $400 Alex.

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