Oculus founder Palmer Luckey is now developing an AR headset for the US military
Palmer Luckey's defense company Anduril takes over the development of IVAS.
Oculus founder Palmer Luckey has hinted several times that he was working on another headset. Now we know what it is.
In a blog post, Luckey announced that his defense company Anduril is taking over the IVAS program. IVAS stands for Integrated Visual Augmentation System and is an AR headset originally developed by Microsoft to give US soldiers visual superpowers on the battlefield.
The Hololens maker won a $22 billion Pentagon contract in 2021 to build a technologically advanced military Hololens. However, development has dragged on for years.
The announced partnership between Microsoft and Anduril Industries, which has yet to be approved by the U.S. Department of Defense, will see Anduril take over production, future hardware and software development, and delivery timelines from Microsoft. However, the Redmond company will continue to provide the cloud solution for IVAS. In this area, the two companies are deepening an existing collaboration.
What kind of device does Palmer Luckey want to build?
The targeted headset is likely to be a wearable display for Anduril's Lattice information platform, i.e. an AR or MR headset that provides an augmented view of a monitored border area or battlefield.
"As warfare grows more complex, the need for intuitive, information-rich tools becomes increasingly urgent. Traditional mission command systems — that rely on flat maps, static dashboards and verbal communication — are ill-suited to the dynamic nature of modern battlefields. The IVAS program represents a groundbreaking step forward in military technology, providing soldiers with a comprehensive, body-worn system that integrates advanced augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) to give warfighters beyond line-of-sight perception capabilities, increasing combat effectiveness, survivability against drones, and accelerating mission command of unmanned systems," Microsoft and Anduril wrote in a joint press release.
As far as Microsoft is concerned, the company is probably relieved to have passed on IVAS, especially since it gave up on the AR hardware business with Hololens some time ago. With XR and military enthusiast Palmer Luckey, Microsoft probably couldn't have found a better candidate to take this technology forward, even if it's going to be extremely challenging, as Luckey himself must know.
Still, the VR pioneer is bursting with anticipation. Luckey concludes his blog post with the exuberant words: "Whatever you are imagining, however crazy you imagine I am, multiply it by ten and then do it again. I am back, and I am only getting started."
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