renatohm said:

This is an interesting trend - up to the end of the Cold War it was the military that pushed the limits of what was possible, but the consumer market has taken over the lead for quite a while now.

This was one of the main parts of 'Swarm Troopers,' which is about how small drones will continue to evolve and really shape the battlefield (specifically at the infantry level rather then like shock and awe level.) Essentially, the author argued that because modern cellphones are getting far more r&d money then most military systems, they will outpace most military systems for general use compact sensors and optics and microcomputing. And that these advanced, compact sensors and systems make it easier and easier to create very capable little drones. And worse, that the bulk of the smartphone production and compact drone production is in China, allowing China to fuse these two manufacturing bases and create swarms of very nast, smart little drones. 

Along those lines, the Navy found that the best controllers for its submarines were actually just Xbox controllers. Which seems silly at firts until you realize that Microsft and Sony spend more on handheld controller r&d then anyone.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/19/16333376/us-navy-military-xbox-360-controller

And then of course theres these blast from the past circa 2009 - just 11 years ago. No doubt if this had ever been fielded, it would be lapped in capability by a $50 bottom end smartphone today. 

Or this 23oz model from 2009...

https://techcrunch.com/2009/03/12/military-wrist-computer-takes-over-your-forearm/

https://www.popsci.com/gear-amp-gadgets/article/2009-06/ultimate-wristwatch/

My understanding is that multiple companies that were trying to build a wearable 'wrist computer' for the military concluded that they would a) not be able to meet th performance of a contemporary smarthphone and b) within a few years would be dramatically inferior to a basic smartphone. 

In terms of Optics, the latest Iphone 13 Pro has a real 3x optical zoom + 15x digital zoom, allowing it to potentially serve as a medium-long range optic, as well as a super wide lens that would allow for a maximum field of view CQB sight. 

Already there is work to turn the Iphone into a rifle optic, which while crude now shows promise

http://bulletin.accurateshooter.com/2013/11/inteliscope-gun-mounted-smartphone-sighting-system/

Now we imagine what an Iphones camera and sensors could do in another 10 years, and then imagine those off the shelf sensors and optics being repackaged into a proper weapon optic...

And with proper industrial sensors (thermal, lowlight, etc), a reddot would be a backup, while sensor data would be projected to IVAS or a similar but simple visor. Software is already more than capable of overlapping visual sources captured from a limited vision cone on to a synthetic display

The display technology is really the biggest hangup at this point unfortunately.

There's lots of stuff we can do well In other forms that's held back by this.

we'll have to wait until IVAS either develops or crash. I liked what I readed about it, because it looked like a well feedbacked program. But it is really ambitious, so who knows...

poliorcetes said:

we'll have to wait until IVAS either develops or crash.

Program is currently 'paused;'

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/42739/army-halts-widely-hyped-multi-billion-dollar-advanced-augmented-reality-goggle-program

There are more information about last developments. It seems to be delayed and I do want to believe that they are reactioning to an excess of optimism in their deadlines. 

From what I understand, it's on a very short pause but likely still on track. They're working on light filtering and some other things.

What we really need is for big consumer players to push the display and power consumption technologies forward.

But augmented reality has been one of those things that's just about here for a long time yet never seems to make it across the line.

It'll get there though, just not as fast as any of us want it to.

LOL, such smart optic has already been adopted by PLA on its QBU-10 sniper rifle since almost 10 years ago.

Are you the real @Xmszeon, if so I love your animations

xmszeon said:

LOL, such smart optic has already been adopted by PLA on its QBU-10 sniper rifle since almost 10 years ago

Could you expand on which capabilities the QBU-10 optic has? A quick googling turns up multiple versions of the smart optic, and the english translation in the description is pretty meh.

Theres this optic shown with charismatic sniper:

And then this optic shown by this more cranky character: