January 28, 2012:
The U.S. Army has finally found a useful and reliable eye display. The RED-I is a 170 gram (6 ounce) eyepiece display that is designed to easily mount on combat helmets, military goggles, flight helmets, and eyeglasses. It provides a 640x480 pixel grayscale (256 shades) display that runs 13 hours on two AA or one DL123 lithium batteries. Each Red-I costs $3,200. RED-I is plug and play with most digital output devices.
The army has already received over 3,000 of these and has another 7,000 on order. One very popular feature of RED-I is that the user can see through the display and not lose the use of one eye. The army uses RED-I with night vision equipment, some weapons systems, and for the display of mission critical information.