The Navy's Oculus Rift Project Could Lead To Fighting Real Wars Through Virtual Reality

The US Navy is bound to win itself some recruits with images from its new BlueShark prototype.

BlueShark is the joint initiative of the USC Institute of Naval Technologies and the Office of Naval Research's Swampworks division. Designed to be a melding of the analog and the digital, BlueShark hopes to answer how the Navy could function in 2020 through the use of cutting edge technologies that might not be quite ready for common use.

Although still in extremely early stages of design, BlueShark has the likelihood of completely changing the norm through a mixture of brand new hardware, software, and conceptual frameworks.

And yes, the Oculus Rift is one of the gadgets currently being employed in trials. The Rift allows the user to see a fully integrated virtual reality world, while also tracking head movement.

In the picture above, we see a Marine interacting with a virtual mockup of a ship through the Rift and a touch screen controller. Hopes are that this technology could allow the control, or repair, of ships in real time from thousands of miles away.

In the picture below, a tester's movements are being tracked through the Oculus Rift's sensors, and are then integrated into the virtual world.