It's pretty clear that Apple is working on a possible future head mounted display while Facebook's Oculus Rift is creating a lot of buzz and Microsoft's HoloLens is picking up some excitement with Salesforce's CEO calling it "Amazing beyond words!" This week we even read an IDC report claiming that VR hardware will soar past the $2 billion mark in 2016 and closer to $12 billion by 2020. But one headset you might not hear too much about in the public anytime soon is one that Lockheed Martin is working on for the military. We stumbled onto their patent filing earlier today and thought that some of you might be interested in learning a little about it.

Without getting into the complexity of their new Fresnel Lenses system, some of the applications that Lockheed Martin envisions bringing to the headset include an image display system that could be used as a communications or small screen television; an optical see-through, augmented reality, binocular viewer; and a feature that's certainly not a common off-the-shelf technology: sniper detection. Other applications include commercial training, military training and operations, and CAD manufacturing.

Hmm, how far away are they from adding vision technology or heat sensors that could assist soldiers in detecting humans behind structures. I'm sure there are other off-the-record features that are simply too highly sensitive to be presented in patent filings. Perhaps even technologies that they've been working on for years in Area 51 J Earthlings wishing to explore this patent filing could do so here.

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