Palmer Luckey Partners with Microsoft to Transform US Soldiers into Starship Troopers

Anduril Industries, the military technology company founded by Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey, is teaming up with Microsoft to improve the mixed reality headsets used by the U.S. military. project announced by Anduril will embed the company’s Lattice software into its Integrated Vision System (IVAS), enabling HoloLens-based headsets to provide soldiers with live information from drones, ground vehicles and air defense systems.

Integrating Lattice with IVAS can warn users of incoming threats detected by an air defense system, for example, even beyond visual range. “It’s about making soldiers better,” Luckey said in an interview with Wire, “Their visual perception, their auditory perception — basically to give them all the vision that Superman has and more, and make them more deadly.”

Luckey compared the IVAS design to the infantry headphones that appeared in Robert Heinlein’s work in the 1950s. Space Soldiers novel, story Wire that the headset “is already being created exactly as science fiction writers imagined it.”

The first IVAS headset developed by Microsoft in 2021 combined integrated thermal and night vision sensors in a heads-up display, but it reportedly caused headaches, nausea, and eyestrain in testing. Microsoft improved the design to address these issues last year and reported Wire that the IVAS platform will be “further refined” after additional testing to take place in early 2025. The U.S. Army has previously said it plans to issue to $21.9 billion in 10 years IVAS Project Agreement.