Qualcomm is moving into the silly-hatted world of VR with the announcement of a new virtual reality software development kit SDK.
The new SDK ties in with the company’s current Snapdragon 820 CPU, which powers the likes of the LG G5 and some versions of the Samsung Galaxy S7.
The Snapdragon 820 already has the hardware to support VR experiences, but now Qualcomm has added the means for developers to harness that power. The SDK will allow developers access to the chip’s VR-focused capabilities.
“DSP sensor fusion” grants easy access to the right combination of inertial data from the phone’s gyroscopes and accelerometers. “Fast motion to photon” enables the fast transformation of rendered images in 3D space, and will improve latency by 50 percent.
“Stereoscopic rendering with lens correction” improves visual quality for 3D headsets, while “VR layering” helps with the rendering of menus in virtual reality environments. Finally, “Power management” helps maintain stable frame rates for VR apps.
Related: What is Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear?
“We’re providing advanced tools and technologies to help developers significantly improve the virtual reality experience for applications like games, 360 degree VR videos and a variety of interactive education and entertainment applications,” says Qualcomm’s senior director of engineering, Dave Durnil.
Qualcomm will push out the SDK some time in the second quarter of 2016, via the Qualcomm Developer Network.
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