Qualcomm Expands Accelerator Program for AR, VR to Advance 855 5G Platform

Qualcomm touted its role in extended reality (XR), announcing Monday ecosystem support from OEMs, operators and platform providers for interactive augmented and virtual reality experiences connected to 5G smartphones using its Snapdragon 855 mobile platform. Benefits from 5G in XR include high data rates and low latency, it said. XR viewers can be optimized and commercially ready for the mobile industry this year, it said. The company will expand its HMD (head-mounted display) Accelerator Program (HAP) to include and help pre-validate components and performance between smartphones and XR viewers, it said. XR viewers will bring a point-of-sale bundling opportunity to OEMs and new experiences to customers as 5G uses emerge, Qualcomm said. Later this year, Qualcomm and its HAP collaborators plan to release a viewer performance and compatibility badge icon. It cited Acer’s Ojo HMD VR viewer with high-resolution displays and 6 degrees-of-freedom tracking and the nreal light AR glasses as designs with USB-C connectivity that can work with the platform. The nreal light AR glasses initially required a processing box tethered to a Snapdragon 845 processing box, it said. OnePlus, Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi and Black Shark are expected to have Snapdragon 855-based smartphones in 2019. The increased resolution, high bandwidth and streamlined form-factor of XR viewers connected to 5G handsets offer an “evolutionary step in immersive consumer devices,” said David Cole, CEO of immersive live sports and music provider NextVR.