Written on March 23, 2008 – 3:00 am | by Bogdan Alex |
You know the OICW-equipped sort of futuristic troopers in the US army. Great weapons and some great war gear like helmet-mounted monocles that display a few digital mini-maps with GPS tracers. You ain’t seen nothing! At least that’s what a bunch of scientists claim.

In the near future, infantry troops could see an info-"augmented" reality all around them, with contact lenses that provide "first-person shooter-type video game" environments to those that wear them. Responsible for this wacky project are the guys over at DARPA, the Pentagon's blue sky science and technology division.

Three or five years, not more, and real life battlefields could be swarming with videogame vision troops, making the line between reality and virtual worlds even thinner. However, a series of questions remain to be addressed – from manufacturing and power to wireless data transfer. Scientists can’t seem to make up their minds regarding the type of display technologies that would be used. DARPA suggests lasers and we can only speculate about organic light-emitting diodes.

DARPA even talks about the materials behind real-life invisibility cloaks. The Pentagon is thinking about spending $3 million next year on transparent displays. One other possibility could be represented by "metamaterials," the strange substances that can bend certain frequencies of light around them.