The future will tell us if the game went well or badly, but Facebook has put virtual reality on the table with its Metaverse, and the race has already been unleashed among other large companies to get on this train. Companies like Nvidia or Microsoft, for example, and Qualcomm has also wanted to propose its own solution although in his own way.
We say in his own way because in his presentation of ‘Snapdragon Spaces’Qualcomm wanted to make it clear that its focus is not on virtual reality but that its new platform, intended for now for the Android ecosystem, is about augmented reality. Thus, Qualcomm has presented its new ‘Snapdragon Spaces’ and we already have more than one company supporting the project.
Spaces is about augmented reality, not virtual
As we have said, Qualcomm veers towards augmented reality with its new ‘Snapdragon Spaces’, thus distancing itself from Facebook’s virtual reality proposals and part of its competition in the sector. The company places its new platform on the market and Spaces becomes a kind of evolution of the previous XR1 and XR2 5G, although we found notable improvements in terms of interaction.
For example, ‘Snapdragon Spaces’ now includes special mapping in addition to plane detection and understanding of the environment and the scene. The Qualcomm platform is able to better understand the environment in which we will move with the information that will be added through augmented reality. Thus, the glasses that we can connect to Spaces they will better know where they are and what they have around them, providing context.
Although several companies are already listed alongside Qualcomm in Spaces’ announcement release, Lenovo will be the first to put compatible glasses on the market. These are the Lenovo ThinkReality A3, glasses that we could see at the dawn of 2021 but have not yet reached the market. As collaborators or partners of this ‘Snapdragon Spaces’ we also find Gamers of the caliber of Xiaomi and OPPO, and it seems that in the spring of 2022 we will have a proposal for glasses from both of them.
But if we leave hardware manufacturers aside and focus on raw software, ‘Snapdragon Spaces’ will feature giants the size of Epic Games, Niantic or Unity. All of them will develop apps and different software to use Qualcomm’s augmented reality platform in its different aspects.
More information | Qualcomm