Qualcomm Launches a New Chip Specifically For Standalone AR, VR Devices (arstechnica.com) 8
Yesterday at the Augmented World Expo in Santa Clara, California, Qualcomm announced a new chip specifically designed for standalone augmented reality and virtual reality devices: the Snapdragon XR1. Ars Technica reports: The company is staying tight-lipped on technical details about the new SoC for the time being. Qualcomm says the SoC will use a Kryo CPU and Adreno GPU, as Qualcomm chips typically do, but exactly how those and the rest of the XR1's building blocks will be configured isn't yet clear. That said, Qualcomm is slotting the XR1 below its existing Snapdragon 845 -- the chip powering most of the year's highest-end smartphones -- in terms of memory bandwidth and GPU power. It is primarily aiming XR1 devices at "lean back" experiences like 360-degree video viewing, at least to start.
Even still, the company says the XR1 can output video up to 4K resolution at 60 frames per second, that it'll keep motion-to-photon latency "well below" 20 milliseconds (so as to prevent nausea and motion sickness), and that it can handle both 3DoF and 6DoF tracking for headsets and accompanying controllers if needed. (Devices with the latter allow users to replicate a fuller range of movement in a virtual space.) Qualcomm is talking up the chip's power management and 3D-audio abilities and its support for always-on voice assistance as well.
Even still, the company says the XR1 can output video up to 4K resolution at 60 frames per second, that it'll keep motion-to-photon latency "well below" 20 milliseconds (so as to prevent nausea and motion sickness), and that it can handle both 3DoF and 6DoF tracking for headsets and accompanying controllers if needed. (Devices with the latter allow users to replicate a fuller range of movement in a virtual space.) Qualcomm is talking up the chip's power management and 3D-audio abilities and its support for always-on voice assistance as well.
Mundane reality is bad enough (Score:2)
Humans are barely capable of dealing with mundane reality, how the hell does anyone expect Augmented and Virtual realities to do anything but make us even more insane? How can applying the information firehose directly to the forehead do anything but make our ability to cope with digitally induced insanity even worse?
Qualcomm is a sad, Greedy Company (Score:2)
Pushing yesterday's tech, with their slow, power-hungry designs.
Why do you think all the Qualcomm-equipped smartphones have batteries twice the mAh capacity of an iPhone's, but with vastly inferior performance and nearly identical battery life?
And yet, then they trap OEMs into using their horseshit tech, and SUE them for breach of contract if they try to change to something else.
And 20 MILLIsecond latency in a dedicated system with gobs of hardware support? Yeah, that's "cutting edge"...