In 2021, Microsoft signed an agreement A deal worth $22 billion with the US Army to develop an Integrated Vision Assistance System (IVAS) based on the HoloLens headset. Not everyone was delighted with the idea of producing AR headsets for the US military – aiming to improve “situational awareness, target engagement and informed decision-making” – and as usual with military procurement, there were difficulties and delays along the way, but despite all that the program continued to move forward. But now IVAS headsets face potentially their biggest challenge yet: they’re just too damn costly.
That’s the total price: IVAS alone costs about $42,000 to produce, but other expenses such as military program management and software support must also be factored in. Microsoft’s vice president of mixed reality, Robin Seiler, said the company is currently “going through the program to determine where we can reduce costs.”
“It’s quite a complex system, so if you look at cost reduction, you have to look at it at the component level, at the labor level and at the supply chain level,” Seiler said.
It’s not particularly surprising that a government agency wants products to be cheaper than a huge corporate conglomerate would like, but this isn’t the first time IVAS has come under fire over price.
In 2022, the US Department of Defense (via TechSpot) warned that the program “may cause wasting a whopping $21.88 billion of taxpayer funds” because it was unclear whether soldiers in the field would actually employ them. What was and is a valid concern: Business expert reported that same year that complaints about the headset at this stage of development included size, weight, loss of peripheral vision, and most importantly, the glare of the display, which was apparently evident from a very long distance, giving away the user’s location. (Yes, it looks frosty on Sam Fisher, but in the real world, as one tester put it, “we could get killed by these devices.”) Then in 2023, the US Congress blocked the army’s plan buy 6,900 headsets for $400 million; instead, it awarded Microsoft another $40 million to build a better one.
Microsoft discontinued production of the HoloLens 2 headset earlier this month, but has not announced it yet Upload VR remains “fully committed” to the development of IVAS.
