Exciting XR Updates June/July 2023

It’s been an extremely exciting couple of months in the world of #XR and for #TeamQualcomm. Qualcomm exhibited at #AWE2023 and shared several new hardware and software announcements. Our partner Meta announced its latest headset, the Meta Quest 3 powered by #Snapdragon, and Apple revealed its first foray into XR hardware. It’s a lot to catch up on, so allow me to share some updates.

AWE 2023 was the biggest one yet

AWE 2023 was big for Snapdragon and for the XR community at large. We were ecstatic to see over 18 partners presenting their demos built with Snapdragon Spaces. These demos showed off the variety of use cases and experiences that Snapdragon Spaces can enable. We expect to see even more in the future, as more developers discover what the platform can help them accomplish.

That momentum carries into the hardware side as well, as OEMs announced Snapdragon Spaces support for their devices: TCL revealed its RayNeo X2 #AR Glasses and DigiLens Inc. shared its ARGO AR smart glasses. We also welcomed a new partner to our growing Snapdragon Spaces ecosystem: OPPO announced the OPPO MR Glass Developer Edition, which features binocular video pass-through. On the VR side, we celebrated Lenovo’s ThinkReality VRX becoming commercially available. It was great to see our collaborations with all of these amazing partners on display during our Day 1 Keynote. These partnerships will help grow XR by drawing in more consumers and developers.

We introduced our next major feature for Snapdragon Spaces — Dual Render Fusion — to further help attract developers. This new feature lowers the barrier for developers to start experimenting with AR and turn their 2D mobile apps into 3D spatial experiences. It’s also a huge leap forward in fusing the smartphone with AR glasses. We believe that this blurring of the lines between devices is the future of XR experiences.

During our keynote we shared a look at how the Red Bull app uses Dual Render Fusion to create a seamless experience between your phone and your AR glasses, completely unbound from the precious few inches of your smartphone. It’s a much more immersive experience that I believe sports fans will love. At our AWE booth, we showcased an exciting demo with Kittch that showed what’s possible with Dual Render Fusion. Kittch’s demo was really fun, especially for folks who are wannabe chefs. The app makes cooking easier than ever with interactive recipes that help you cook hands-free and in real-time instead of craning your neck over to a smartphone or recipe book on the counter.

We also announced an update to our partnership with Niantic Inc. We are working together to combine the power of Niantic's Lightship VPS (Virtual Positioning System) with Snapdragon Spaces to create headworn AR experiences that can take place anywhere. At AWE, we announced 10 premier AR developers who will get early access to these tools to build amazing location based AR experiences. As AR devices become more portable and easier to wear, location-based, headworn-AR experiences will become more popular, and this is a great step in building the future of AR.

In addition to Snapdragon’s amazing new partners, I’m also noticing a vibrant and motivated XR industry, with both new and returning players showing exciting hardware and software. We saw where the future of display optics could be headed, with ISVs (Independent Software Vendor) entering the enterprise space. AWE was nothing short of inspiring. On a personal note, I had the pleasure of meeting with many compelling companies, from OEMs and ODMs, to developers and more. We also invited Jeremy (JDun) Duncan and Kevin Breeze - Tech Influencer from the Snapdragon Insiders community to join us and experience everything AWE had to offer, and their enthusiasm was palpable. The passion for XR is alive and well and thriving.

Meta announced the Meta Quest 3

As I said, the XR ecosystem continues to grow thanks to existing partners like Meta. The company announced its all-new Meta Quest 3. While I can’t reveal any new details here, we collaborated closely with Meta to create the most powerful Snapdragon XR chipset to date. This new platform enables the Meta Quest 3 to deliver more than double the graphical performance of the Meta Quest 2, and will combine with the headset’s new high-resolution pancake optics for more immersive and detailed visuals than ever before.

Meta’s new pancake optic design also enables the headset to have a 40% slimmer optic profile for a thinner, more comfortable design, while still packing in significant performance gains. This enables Mixed Reality (MR) to be accessible to even more people, which we believe will be a key use case going forward. The Meta Quest 3 represents an exciting new wave of XR devices that are smaller sleeker, more capable, and are able to handle more advanced use cases. Our collaboration on this device is only the first step of a multi-year partnership with Meta where we’re shaping the next generation of the #metaverse and spatial computing.

We welcome Apple to the world of XR

We have a new player in the XR space, and we welcome the introduction of the Apple Vision Pro. Apple joining the space corroborates our vision for XR and spatial computing being the next generation of computing. The Apple Vision Pro will benefit the whole industry by increasing developer interest and consumer awareness in XR. While we ultimately believe in an open and collaborative XR ecosystem, we still feel that Apple joining the space will be a net benefit to us all.

If you’re interested in where the industry might be headed in the next several years and beyond, I recently wrote about what we can expect for the future of spatial computing. I look forward to seeing how the rest of this year comes together, with exciting tech and software on the horizon, the MR space continues to grow.