[numakerg]

I don't work with the tech, but is there a use case for operating drones in the field?

You want to peek around a corner or under a door, drop a tiny robot. Operate it with a handheld joystick and get a camera feed into your headset while still maintaining your regular field of vision.

Final product won't necessarily take the form of the hololens. Might just be an attachment to whatever standard equipment they have, more like a Google glass.

[withinrafael]

Not really possible with HoloLens. This is AR not VR or a HUD.

[numakerg]

I'm curious, what's the obstacle? Can't they take the display from the hololens, make it smaller and integrate it into one eye of an existing headset that the military uses?

[withinrafael]

Existing HoloLens devices show semi transparent holograms overlaid on the real world so to speak, in a viewable frame size resembling something like a oversized postage stamp. (That is, holographic content does not fill your entire field of view.) It's not conducive to showing 100% opaque video content for a live drone feed, in my opinion, due to technical limitations (opacity, rendering proximity) and human comfort issues.

I appreciate that they're offering "custom" units and could theoretically fix these issues. But it _sounds_ like it'll be more of a ruggidization and compliance realignment of existing hardware. Pure speculation of course.

[freeone3000]

HoloLens 2 devices offer an expanded field of view of approx 60 degrees. It's still semi-transparent, and opaque content has improved but still can't outshine looking directly at lighting.

[vel0city]

A video feed has areas of lighter stuff along with areas of darker stuff. (Most) AR systems work by projecting lasers on to a glass plane in front of you, adding light to your FOV. How do you project darkness on a transparent background? The video feed won't look that great in AR.

[verdverm]

Not true, you can watch YouTube in HL2 out of the box. There are videos of hobbyists visualizing a self-driving RC car from the HL2.