Qualcomm Snapdragon Spaces is official: it's a kit for developers that, according to the American company, will increase the spread of augmented reality
Qualcomm has made official the Snapdragon Spaces XR platform for developers during the Augmented World Expo event. The goal is to encourage the spread of augmented reality and make it available to everyone, and for everyone we mean even those who do not have particularly powerful tools or even those who are not so fascinated by the current augmented reality experiences.
Qualcomm wants to give a boost to augmented reality viewers through the development kit Snapdragon Spaces, which is intended to help developers to create more immersive experiences in augmented reality (AR, which stands for Augmented Reality). The platform wants to create a kind of channel where the augmented reality experience can "flow" smoothly from the ideas of developers, who can benefit from the tools specifically developed by Qualcomm, to the users, i.e., end users, to finally make innovation available to everyone.
What is Qualcomm Snapdragon Spaces
The American company has devised a system, Snapdragon Spaces, that can facilitate the interaction between user and environment through the "filter" of augmented reality so that developers can improve AR applications. The tools are diverse: spatial mapping and meshing technologies, surface, object and image recognition, scene and environment understanding, and so on. It's all aimed at getting the most out of existing and future hardware, thereby improving the augmented reality experience that can be experienced by the end user.
Qualcomm called Snapdragon Spaces the first AR platform optimized for glasses that interface with smartphones with an OpenXR-compliant runtime from Khronos, and said it can offer support for major 3D engines, including Epic Games' Unreal Engine 4 and Unity development tools. Snapdragon Spaces also supports app portability and unified workflows with Unity AR Foundation and Unity MARS, allowing developers to create experiences that integrate with the real world.
Partnerships with Xiaomi, Oppo and others
Also have partnerships with companies that make AR devices such as Xiaomi, Lenovo, Motorola or even Oppo to support and grow Snapdragon Spaces as early as the first half of 2022. Qualcomm said the kit is built on proven technology, a horizontal platform and ecosystem that are open and regardless of the type of device you use so developers can create better AR content more easily.