As Meta launches its Quest3 VR headset, Qualcomm today released its latest chips for XR and AR platforms: Snapdragon XR2Gen2 for VR and mixed reality devices and AR1Gen1 designed for smart glasses.
Qualcomm hasn't released a new XR platform for a while. The XR2Gen1 is now over three years old, and while there was speculation that an XR3 would be announced today, the company has decided to stick with the XR2 branding. Obviously, Qualcomm's understanding of the XR[x] brand is that XR1 is a "high quality" level, XR2 is a "high quality" level, and there will be more levels in the future.
Despite this, the company still claims to have improved the GPU performance of the XR chip solution by 2.5 times and improved the artificial intelligence performance by 8 times, while significantly improving energy efficiency. Qualcomm also notes that XR2Gen2 is optimized to power two 3k displays and receive input from up to 10 cameras and sensors, delivering 12ms pass-through video latency for mixed reality applications.
Hugo Swart, vice president and general manager of Qualcomm's "The key challenges are power consumption, latency, size and performance - of course, performance is closely related to the display resolution. However, the higher the display resolution, the more power the headset needs to run. I can't put 100 watts of power on your head. It's 20 watts at most. Ideally, closer to 10 to 15 watts. So, that's what we have to work on: how to put everything in a piece of silicone and still make it affordable."
Swart also used the opportunity to attack Apple and its expensive Vision Pro and custom-designed hardware. "I think a device that costs over $3,000 -- how many people can actually afford it? You really need to make it accessible to everyone. That's our goal."
Qualcomm said that so far, its XR chips have provided support for about 80 terminal models, covering various fields from VR to mixed reality. "We're actually already seeing a lot of traction in consumer markets like gaming, fitness, social engagement, entertainment, live events, but very importantly also in enterprise areas like training, education, healthcare," Swart said.
Despite the efforts of several manufacturers and big brands, smart glasses with displays are still a niche product. Qualcomm hopes the new platform will reinvigorate the market with a more powerful image processing pipeline, as well as what the company calls "on-glasses" artificial intelligence, such as for voice commands and noise reduction. AR1Gen1 can support displays with 1280×1280 resolution per eye and supports three degrees of freedom.
Ray-Ban's new Stories smart glasses will use the new AR1 Gen1 platform, but like most current smart glasses, it won't come with a screen, although the AR1 will support screens. After all, a heads-up display is a harder problem to solve than mounting cameras on glasses, although it would greatly increase the usefulness of these platforms.
Qualcomm explains: "The platform enables hands-free shooting, sharing or live streaming directly from the glasses. In addition, on-device artificial intelligence enables personal assistant experiences such as audio quality enhancement, visual search and real-time translation. Finally, support for visual heads-up displays enables the consumption of content, including video, that blends seamlessly with the user's field of view."