The flying car, a goal of starry-eyed engineers since at least the beginning of the last century, is getting the DARPA treatment. Called Transformer TX, this flying Humvee-like prototype could be airborne by 2015. More »
newVideoPlayer("mersive.flv", 475, 286);
This 360-degree ultra-high-definition military simulator allows you to drive a Humvee and fire real weapons with absolute precision, including machine guns and rocket launchers, anywhere you want. The 10-projector system achieves a perfectly seamless panorama thanks to Mersive’s Sol system; a calibration, warping and sub-pixel image blending technology that may jump from military sims to your living room in the near future. Sol can get any number of projectors and project a single huge image over a surface of any shape and size. We talked with Mersive about how it works and how this may work for game enthusiasts. [Fast-forward the video a bit to get into the action and check the Halo 3-like video after the jump] More »
Next week, the US Army will begin testing a new Humvee that has a body and frame made completely from composite materials fiberglass, balsa wood, foam and carbon reinforcements. Conventionally, the Army has battled with how to protect Humvees from mines because ironically, adding more armour to the vehicles just weigh them down (and bring them closer to the mines).
The solution was to build a composite frame that makes the Humvee 900lbs lighter (or about 10%). Beyond the weight savings, the other advantage is that the Humvee is reinforced with different composite concoctions where the vehicle needs the most protection from mines (the rear).
Since mines are the biggest killer of US troops in Iraq, such re-engineering should save lives if field testing goes well. [armytimes via gearfuse] More »
