New research from the Office of Navel Research is looking for what ship controls might look like in the not too distant future. Project BlueShark is currently testing out the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset which allows the captain / pilot of a craft to look around their environment and view objects relative to his position, something that just isn’t possible on a flat display.
Even the most modern of Navy vessels such as the stunning USS Zumwalt are limited to 2D displays and their are many obvious benefits to monitoring radar and other assets at sea with the added depth, given that you can have aircraft above, ships on the surface and submarines and other objects below the surface, being able to differentiate the depth and distant at a glance can be the difference between life and death.
Using a virtual avatar sat on top of a virtual vessel, John Moor of the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory explores a ship using a touch interface, tracking hardware and an Oculus Rift, one can easily imaging the technology being hooked up to real time 3D cameras positioned around the ship, or even on drones, giving the crew a big tactical advantage.
Thank you Popsci for providing us with this information.
Image courtesy of Popsci.
