“It’s kind of the culture,” said Dan Grazier, a former Marine and now a fellow at the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight, investigating military waste and abuse. “The Pentagon always wants to find a technological solution, particularly one that can generate contracts and subcontracts spread all over the country.”
“A lot of these fancy electronic systems end up being more of a distraction than they are actually useful in helping soldiers do their jobs,” added Grazier.
EIGHT YEARS AGO, the 2014 edition of IQT Quarterly, the publication of In-Q-Tel, notes that we are still “far away from a true Star Trek Holodeck experience,” yet:
A perfect simulated reality that is indistinguishable from real life will ultimately take one of two forms: it will either manipulate real light and real matter, like the Star Trek Holodeck, or it will remove the “middleman” of wearable VR inputs and instead directly manipulate our perceptions through a machine-brain interface, like that envisioned in The Matrix. Between those perfect simulations and the current state of the art, we envision the emergence of hybrids, such as the manipulation of real light (holograms) combined with haptic gloves, or the direct manipulation of the brain’s sense of touch combined with VR/AR contact lenses, or many other such combinations involving other senses. Given where VR is now compared to just 10 years ago, and the historical pace of technological change since the Industrial Revolution, it’s astounding to consider how VR might continue to evolve. We think these “perfect systems” may emerge within the next two centuries, and that the current state of the art provides a strong foundation to build upon.
The rapid investments from government sources in augmented and virtual reality reflect the vision laid out eight years ago. Mojo Vision, a startup based in Saratoga, California, is developing an augmented reality contact lens using “tiny microLED” displays the size of a grain of sand to project images directly onto the retina. The company is backed financially by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, a research and development arm of the Pentagon.
In 2018, In-Q-Tel backed a startup called Immersive Wisdom that provides communication and data sharing interfaces. “Allowing multiple users to be anywhere in the world, while still being connected via the same virtual space containing shared maps, video feeds, and real-time data, offers a significant new edge,” In-Q-Tel said in a statement at the time.
In-Q-Tel also invested in DigiLens, the producers of a low-cost holographic lens used for augmented and virtual reality glasses. Last year, the Air Force awarded $1.2 million in contracts to the company.
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