Microsoft to Supply US Army More AR Combat Headsets Following Positive Field Test

Microsoft’s HoloLens-based headset built on contract for the US Army has passed an important round of field testing by soldiers. The company is now set to fulfill a larger order to be used in more rigorous testing slated to take place in 2025.

Awarded in 2019, Microsoft’s $22 billion defense contract is aiming to supply the US Army with a tactical AR headset for soldiers based on HoloLens 2 technology, or what’s called an Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS),

According to Bloomberg, 20 prototype versions of the newer 1.2 IVAS headsets were field tested by two squads of solders in late August specifically to check for improvements in reliability, low-light performance and ergonomics. It was reported in early 2022 that Microsoft was bracing for negative field testing, citing concerns with low-light performance and nausea.

Taking place at Fort Drum, New York, those tests “demonstrated improvements in reliability, low light sensor performance, and form factor,” a US Army spokesperson told Bloomberg, saying further that “soldier feedback was positive.”

The Army awarded Microsoft another contract on September 5th for the 1.2 IVAS to see if the company could scale production. Its $22 billion contract indicates an upper target, and not the full amount granted to Microsoft at present.

Army orders more AR goggles post-pukegate

(Image courtesy Microsoft.)

Remember those mixed reality combat goggles that Microsoft was building for the Army that made soldiers nauseous? (See our previous story here.) Well, they’re back.

Microsoft got its hands slapped and had to go back to the drawing board after reports came out last year that its new AR goggles were making soldiers literally sick to their stomachs. But it seems they’ve fixed the issues, and are ready for round two.

The Army just placed a new order for the Integrated Visual Augmentation System or IVAS goggles, Bloomberg reports.

Microsoft sent the Army some new prototype headsets this summer. The company apparently fixed the issues that caused headaches, nausea and pain.

The Army spokesperson said the new headsets showed “improvements in reliability, low light sensor performance, and form factor.”

I’m sure Microsoft was sweating bullets about this contract, since its consumer AR efforts seem to be dying on the vine. Apple has been grabbing all the hype with its upcoming mixed reality headset — but at $3,500 a pop, I don’t know how much traction those headsets are going to get, either. Which just leaves Meta and the Quest 2.

Meanwhile, Microsoft laid off a bunch of the HoloLens team earlier this year.

The next steps for IVAS include adding in cloud computing, the Army Times reports. This will let soldiers download apps for specific mission needs.

The Army wants to avoid overloading IVAS by offloading apps to the cloud instead of the device. During testing, soldiers used the goggles for assault planning, mission practice, targeting, and more.

IVAS lets them ditch the sand table to quickly scout and rehearse missions virtually.

Rather than an MRE-box sand table, a unit could virtually “see” the terrain in their heads-up display and rehearse a mission in their patrol base before leaving the wire,” Brig. Gen. Christopher Schneider told Army Times.

“Now we have to make this system producible and affordable,” he added.

Earlier issues around night vision, size, and weight are getting fixed bit by bit. The goal is to nail down cost and manufacturing in 18 months.

If all goes well, IVAS could start hitting units by 2025. Of course, that’s assuming the cloud tech actually works as advertised. And that Congress keeps funding the project.

How it started

Microsoft started working with the Army in 2018 on mixed reality headsets using its HoloLens tech. The goal was to help soldiers train, plan missions and operate better in the field, the company said in a long article about the project two years ago.

IVAS has night vision, heat sensors, 3D mapping and other HoloLens features. It’s meant to give soldiers more awareness by layering digital info onto the real world, the company said.

To get input, Microsoft engineers did mock bootcamps in 2019, where they learned skills like navigating at night. This helped them design IVAS to handle tough conditions soldiers face.

After soldiers tested IVAS for around 80,000 hours by early 2021, Microsoft had a headset ready for combat use.

I’m not sure why they missed the whole nausea thing the first time around. Maybe the engineers had been using the headset so much themselves, during the whole development process, that they were used to it? Or it was so much better than the early iterations, that the nausea didn’t even register as a problem any more?

XR Industry Giants Team up to Save Key Developer Tool

Microsoft, Qualcomm and Magic Leap announced a partnership to “guide the evolution” of the Mixed Reality Toolkit (MRTK), a cross-platform AR/VR development framework which has now gone open-source.

MRTK was a Microsoft-driven project that provided a set of components and features used to accelerate cross-platform XR app development in the Unity game engine. The developing team behind MRTK was unfortunately disbanded, as Microsoft cut both MRTK and the AltspaceVR teams earlier this year in a wide-reaching round of layoffs.

Still, as an open-source project now, Microsoft is joining XR industry cohorts Qualcomm and Magic Leap to form their own independent organization within GitHub that aspires to transform the software into a “true multi-platform toolkit that enables greater third-party collaboration.”

“With Magic Leap joining Microsoft as equal stakeholders on the MRTK steering committee, we hope to enrich the current ecosystem and help our developer community create richer, more immersive experiences that span platforms,” Magic Leap says in a blogpost. “Additionally, our support for MRTK3 will allow for simple porting of MRTK3 apps from other OpenXR devices to our platform.”

MRTK3 already supports a wide range of platforms, either full or experimentally, including OpenXR devices like Microsoft HoloLens 2, Meta Quest, Windows Mixed Reality, SteamVR, Oculus Rift (on OpenXR), Lenovo ThinkReality A3, as well as Windows Traditional desktop. The committee says more devices are “coming soon,” one of which will likely be the Magic Leap 2 AR headset.

Meanwhile, Microsoft announced MRTK3 is on track to reach general availability to developers on the second week of September 2023. To learn more, check out Microsoft’s MRTK3 hub, which includes support info, tutorials, and more.