XR (VR/AR)
Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are being used in more industries than ever including games, education, health care, and manufacturing. Now VR and AR are converging in various combinations to bring new immersive extended reality (XR) experiences to users.
Our Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 845 Mobile Platform and Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 835 Mobile Platform help developers to create premium XR experiences such as VR and AR across a range of mobile devices, while our Snapdragon XR1 Platform is a dedicated mobile XR platform that allows developers to create high-quality, cost effective XR solutions for mainstream use.
Snapdragon mobile and VR platforms can be found in existing XR devices such as the HTC VIVE Focus head mounted display (HMD), and Lenovo Mirage Solo HMD.
Below we outline the tools we have available to create and enhance your XR experiences.
COMPUTE
The Snapdragon core hardware architectures – Qualcomm® Hexagon™ Vector Processor, Qualcomm® Adreno™ GPU and Qualcomm® Kryo™ CPU – work to ensure your XR applications run quickly and efficiently on devices. This heterogeneous computing approach makes it easy for you to choose the optimal Snapdragon core for your target performance, thermal, and power efficiency requirements.
The XR1 supports leading graphics APIs including OpenGL, OpenCL, and Vulkan. The platform also features advanced vision processing capabilities fundamental for technologies like Visual Inertial Odometry (VIO), which lets users move around in the virtual world or interact with augmented objects in an AR experience. These experiences can be enhanced with high-fidelity audio experiences through Qualcomm® 3D Audio Suite, Qualcomm Aqstic™ Audio Technologies, and Qualcomm® aptX™ Audio.
XR SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT TOOLS
We have a number of resources available to help you create and optimize your XR applications and solutions for truly immersive experiences:
- XR and VR Tools:
- Snapdragon VR SDK – provides developers with access to optimized, advanced VR features on Snapdragon VR devices.
- App Performance Optimization:
- Snapdragon Developer Tools - help you optimize your applications running on Snapdragon mobile platforms. Tools include:
- Specialized Core Optimization: SDKs for specific processor cores are also available:
- Adreno GPU SDK - excels at repeating similar computations on large quantities of data, as in graphics processing and machine learning.
- Adreno SDK for Vulkan – provides the SDK for the Adreno GPU with an implementation of the Vulkan graphics API that runs on Snapdragon processors. Vulkan facilitates cross-platform graphics development.
- Hexagon DSP SDK - best suited to processing digital signals from the outside world in real time, like those generated by a smartphone camera and microphone.
- Audio:
- 3D Audio Tools - create, capture, and render true-to-life immersive 3D audio experiences for VR applications.
- 3D Audio Plugin for Unity - a binaural spatial audio plugin for Unity, ideal for XR experiences and games.
- Computer Vision:
- FastCV Computer Vision SDK – adds computer vision capabilities such as gesture, recognition, face detection, and text recognition.
XR HARDWARE DEVELOPMENT TOOLS
We have a number of resources available to help you create XR applications and resources for different types of devices:
- Mobile Platforms: these HDKs are dynamically featured Android development platforms designed to provide an ideal starting point for creating high-performance mobile devices and applications:
- Snapdragon 845 Hardware Development Kit – a hardware development kit for the Snapdragon 845.
- Snapdragon 835 Hardware Development Kit – a hardware development kit for the Snapdragon 835.
- XR-Specific Platforms: we have kits designed for specific XR-fueled device use cases:
- Snapdragon 845 VR Development Kit - a standalone all-in-one VR headset with a Wide Quad HD (WQHD) AMOLED head mounted display (HMD) with an integrated Snapdragon 845 processor. It includes dual front-facing cameras for six degrees of freedom (6DoF) room scale head tracking and eye tracking.
- Snapdragon 835 VR Development Kit - a standalone all-in-one VR headset with a single panel AMOLED head mounted display (HMD) and an integrated Snapdragon 835 processor.
- Snapdragon XR1 Platform – offers users high-quality XR experiences while enabling OEMs to develop mainstream devices. The XR1 platform has special optimizations for Augmented Reality (AR) experiences with Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities while offering better interactivity, power consumption, and thermal efficiency.
LATEST BLOGS
Explore these links about the latest trends and key features of XR for more ideas and insight into your own projects:
VIDEOS
- Meet the Snapdragon XR1, the world's first dedicated XR platform
- On Device Motion Tracking for Immersive Mobile VR
- Next Gen Technologies driving Immersion
ON-DEMAND WEBINARS
- Boundless photorealistic mobile XR over 5G
- What Consumers Want in their Next XR device
- How to take advantage of XR over 5G: Understanding XR Viewers