SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 23, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Today,
Qualcomm Incorporated (NASDAQ: QCOM) announced that its subsidiary,
Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., has introduced a new virtual reality
development kit (VRDK) for the Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 835 mobile
platform. The new Snapdragon VRDK gives developers early access to
a VR head mounted display (HMD) built with the Snapdragon 835
mobile platform that is supported by an upgraded VR software
development kit (SDK) that works with the HMD.
"With this new VRDK, we're providing virtual reality application
developers with advanced tools and technologies to accelerate a new
generation of VR games, 360-degree VR videos and a variety of
interactive education, enterprise, healthcare and entertainment
applications," said Cristiano Amon,
executive vice president, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., and
president, QCT. "We see great potential for the exciting new
experiences made possible by truly mobile, untethered virtual
reality that's always connected to the internet, and we're excited
to help mobile VR developers more efficiently deliver compelling
and high-quality experiences on upcoming Snapdragon 835 VR-capable
products."
The next generation of mobile virtual
reality applications will be increasingly complex, with
extreme power consumption constraints and challenging performance
requirements that must be met in order for the VR applications to
become truly immersive. Advanced heterogeneous mobile platforms
like the Snapdragon 835 are capable of supporting immersive VR
experiences in standalone head mounted displays (HMDs) that require
neither fans nor cables.
The HMD included in the Snapdragon 835 VRDK consists of:
- Display: Four megapixel (2560x1440) WQHD AMOLED display
(two megapixels per eye)
- Cameras: Six degrees of freedom (6DoF) Motion
Tracking:
- Two monochromatic, stereo- one mega pixel (1280x800) cameras
with fish-eye lenses for each
- integrated sensor IMU (gyroscope, accelerometer, magnetic
compass), with fast interface to the Snapdragon 835 mobile platform
sensor core
- Eye Tracking: Two monochromatic VGA global shutter
cameras with active depth sensing
- Memory: DRAM: 4GB
LPDDR4 and Flash: 64GB UFS
- Connectivity: Wireless with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and
USB3.1 type C (power)
- Audio: Integrated Qualcomm Aqstic™ audio codec
(WCD9335)
- I/O: Trackpad on right side of HMD
Technologies that are crucial for an optimal VR user experience
will also be supported in the software development kit portion of
the VRDK. These include:
- DSP sensor fusion: Utilizing the full
breadth of technologies built into Snapdragon 835, the new SDK
helps allow developers to create more responsive and immersive
experiences with six degrees of freedom (6DoF) by easily
accessing the right combination of camera positional data along
with high frequency inertial data from gyroscopes and
accelerometers via the Snapdragon Sensor Core and predictive head
position processing with the Qualcomm® Hexagon™ DSP
- Foveated rendering: Designed to provide enablement
of a rendering technique useful for VR that senses the user's gaze
direction and then focuses on processing the maximum visual detail
only in the region of interest, via new Snapdragon plugin support
for both Unity and Epic Game Engines
- Fast motion to photon: Supports improved
asynchronous time warp with single buffer rendering and other
techniques for fast transformation of rendered images in 3D space,
which can help reduce latency by roughly 20% when compared to
with previous Snapdragon products
- Stereoscopic rendering with lens correction: Supports 3D
binocular vision with color correction and barrel distortion for
improved visual quality of graphics and video, enhancing the
overall VR experience
- VR layering: Generation of menus, text, and other
overlays so that they render correctly in a virtual world, reducing
distortions that would otherwise make them difficult to read
- Advanced Application Profiling and Power management:
Integration with Snapdragon Profiler and the Qualcomm® Symphony
System Manager SDK to provide application developers with greater
visibility into the VR processing pipeline, along with cohesive
CPU, GPU, and DSP power and performance management to help achieve
stable frame rates for VR applications running in low-power,
thermally-constrained devices
The VRDK is expected to be available in the second quarter of
2017 through the Qualcomm Developer Network and it is
engineered to help developers attain improved VR performance and
power efficiency for upcoming VR OEM devices built with the
Snapdragon 835 that are expected to ship in the second half of
2017.
About Qualcomm
Qualcomm's technologies powered the smartphone revolution and
connected billions of people. We pioneered 3G and 4G – and now we
are leading the way to 5G and a new era of intelligent, connected
devices. Our products are revolutionizing industries, including
automotive, computing, IoT, healthcare and data center, and are
allowing millions of devices to connect with each other in ways
never before imagined. Qualcomm Incorporated includes our licensing
business, QTL, and the vast majority of our patent portfolio.
Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated,
operates, along with its subsidiaries, all of our engineering,
research and development functions, and all of our products and
services businesses, including, our QCT semiconductor business. For
more information, visit Qualcomm's website, OnQ blog, Twitter and
Facebook pages.
Qualcomm, Snapdragon and Hexagon are
trademarks of Qualcomm Incorporated, registered in the United States and other countries.
Qualcomm Aqstic is a trademark of Qualcomm Incorporated.
Qualcomm Snapdragon, Qualcomm Hexagon,
Qualcomm Aqstic and Qualcomm Symphony Manager are products of
Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.
Qualcomm Contacts:
Pete Lancia, Corporate
Communications
Phone: 1-858-845-5959
Email: corpcomm@qualcomm.com
John Sinnott, Investor
Relations
Phone: 1-858-658-4813
Email: ir@qualcomm.com
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SOURCE Qualcomm Incorporated