ON MAY 10, two fighter pilots conducted a proto-metaverse experiment at high altitude. They donned special AR headsets to connect to a system that overlay a ghostly, shimmering image of a refueling aircraft flying alongside them in the sky a few thousand feet above the California desert in a pair of Berkut 540 planes.
Then, one of the pilots performed a refueling maneuver with the virtual tanker while the other watched. Hello and welcome to the nascent military metaverse. These days, metaverse craze is gripping more than just Silicon Valley.
As digital companies and corporations scramble to establish virtual world strategies, many defence startups, contractors, and financiers are increasingly touting the metaverse, even if its definition and utility aren’t always obvious.
The fundamental technologies required for the metaverse, such as augmented and virtual reality, head mounted displays, 3D simulations, and artificial intelligence-built virtual environments, are currently available in the military industry.
The end result is less polished, adorable, and expansive than Mark Zuckerberg’s virtual world concept, but that’s part of the goal.
And, even if the underlying technology stumbles in the civilian sphere, there’s a strong chance it will take off.
For example, a combination of augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and video game visuals has allowed fighter pilots to practice dogfighting against virtual opponents, including Chinese and Russian jets, while pulling several Gs.
According to Red 6, the firm developing the technology, this provides a significantly more realistic test of a pilot’s ability than a traditional flight simulator.
“We can fly against whatever threat we want,” says Daniel Robinson, founder and CEO of Red 6. He further said: “And that threat could be controlled either by an individual remotely or by artificial intelligence.”
Red6’s AR technology must function in harsher environments, with lower latency and greater dependability than consumer AR or VR headsets.
Robinson goes on to say that the company is currently developing a platform that will allow many different scenarios to be depicted in augmented or virtual reality. “What we’re building is really a military metaverse,” he says. “It’s like a multiplayer video game in the sky.”
Some of the most recent military systems include metaverse-related concepts. The new F-35 fighter jet’s high-tech helmet, for example, incorporates an augmented reality display that overlays telemetry data and target information on top of video footage from around the aircraft.
The US Army stated in 2018 that it would pay Microsoft up to $22 billion to construct a version of its HoloLens augmented reality system called the Integrated Visual Augmentation System for warfighters (IVAS).
In recent years, virtual reality and augmented reality have become standard components of military training. Project Blue Shark, a system that allowed sailors to control vessels and collaborate in a virtual environment, was developed in 2014 by the Office of Naval Research and the Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California.
Another project, Project Avenger, is now being utilized to train US Navy pilots. The United States Air Force is utilizing virtual reality to train pilots how to control aircraft and missions.
VR is also utilized to treat veterans suffering from chronic pain and post-traumatic stress disorder. In addition, Boeing has designed an augmented reality environment in which mechanics can practice working on planes before boarding a real one. The US military has recently begun to investigate more complicated virtual worlds. There is also an increasing interest in integrating and mixing virtual worlds in a manner similar to metaverse thinking.
To read our blog on “Meta is attempting to simplify its metaverse,” click here
