Military spends $4.5 million on what appear to be helmet-mounted Virtual Boys

I think it must be hard to feel like a one-man army when you’re wearing such a dorky piece of headwear. The new COMBATREDI (yes, it’s all caps; no, it’s not an acronym) training system pairs a helmet-mounted VR visor with a backpack processing unit to create a rich and immersive “virtual battle space.” Sure, just like a Virtual Boy!

Although they claim realistic graphics and “endless” maneuvering, I’d be concerned about how realistic the movement actually is. I found the gun-shaped projector from Microvision to be pretty engrossing, but I wonder if their little stereo setup (powered by a Core2 Duo and 2GB of DDR2) is as instantaneously responsive? The military thinks so; they’ve sunk quite a chunk of change into the project. You’d think for this many million dollars, they’d get more than 2GB of RAM.

Well, at any rate, it’s better than Halo. If this thing looks interesting, there’s more info over at Danger Room.

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