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Qualcomm’s new headset with eye tracking ships to developers later this year

Qualcomm’s new headset with eye tracking ships to developers later this year

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Credit: Qualcomm

Qualcomm is launching a development kit based on its Snapdragon 845 VR platform in the second quarter of this year. The self-contained headset and software development kit will showcase key elements of Qualcomm’s mobile chip-based VR system, including full inside-out motion tracking and a partnership with eye-tracking company Tobii. It will also support HTC’s Vive Wave platform, which is designed to let VR developers build and sell software across multiple brands of headsets.

Qualcomm has previously touted its plans for six-degree-of-freedom tracking with simultaneous localization and mapping — or more colloquially, “inside-out” tracking that lets people walk around without external markers, using front-facing cameras and internal sensors. Unlike Microsoft’s Windows Mixed Reality headsets or Oculus’ Santa Cruz prototype, which also feature inside-out tracking, Qualcomm’s development kit doesn’t include fully tracked motion controllers. But it still offers more freedom than all-in-one systems like the upcoming Oculus Go headset, which only track head rotation. And unlike Windows Mixed Reality, it’s not tethered to a computer.

Developers who buy Qualcomm’s kit will get a single 2560 x 1440 WQHD display (for a resolution of 1280 x 1440 per eye, at a 60Hz refresh rate), 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage. These specs aren’t the main draw for this headset, though. Besides inside-out tracking, its most exciting feature is a pair of cameras pointed at the wearer’s eyes, powered by Tobii’s eye-tracking technology. You can use eye tracking as a direct control scheme, but it’s more broadly useful for foveated rendering, which lets cheaper headsets power more demanding experiences by only fully rendering parts of the screen that the player is watching.

This is the third major iteration of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon-based VR headset design, and like previous versions, it’s not directly marketed to consumers. But Qualcomm notes that VR headset makers are already using its earlier chipsets: Lenovo’s Mirage Solo and HTC’s Vive Focus are both based on the Snapdragon 835. And if Qualcomm ships development kits for the Snapdragon 845 soon, then commercial products based on it hopefully aren’t far behind.