During GDC in downtown San Francisco, I finished by Qualcomm’s demo space to strive the Lynx R-1 blended actuality headset and chat with Lynx’s CEO, Stan Larroque.

This headset made a reputation for itself up to now couple of years, and it was good to lastly strive a demo. The app consists of a digital journey out and in of our photo voltaic system, with fundamental interactions.

In the demo, you get shut sufficient to the solar, it’s an “immersive” VR expertise through which the cosmos surrounds you. You can pinch-and-pull planets along with your naked hand, which is acknowledged in real-time.

If you step again, the cosmos goes away, and the photo voltaic system seemingly floats within the demo room. The change feels fairly pure although you see the actual world via a digital camera.

Each eye has a 1600×1600 show decision, which is nice for the demo, and I can solely think about how higher it will probably get into the longer term with 2448×2448 shows. I embrace some official video demos representing what I’ve skilled, and I’ll remark additional.

I discovered the Lynx R1 headset extremely attention-grabbing as a result of it may simply deal with VR and AR environments. In VR mode (fully immersed within the digital world), it felt like a typical VR expertise with low latency and good movement to photon response time.

The AR mode is great. Typical AR headsets and functions undergo from a really slender area of view (~54 levels) because of the method projective AR show applied sciences work. Lynx doesn’t use projective show tech, so its AR mode feels extra immersive as a result of the sphere of view is best (~90 levels), making the AR expertise extra pure.

Viewing the actual world via the digital camera permits Lynx to make use of a Z-buffer to occlude some actual objects (like your hand) if a digital 3D object is in entrance of it. This will increase the realism of the combination of the digital objects to the actual world and is not possible to do with a projective know-how.

Finally, the cameras pipeline opens the chance for picture filtering, so you can color-correct or change the HDR firming to show an optimum picture. With totally different sensors, you can even get night time imaginative and prescient. Again, not potential with a basic see-thru AR system.

The draw back of taking a look at the actual world via a digital camera is a few lack of particulars, however it may effectively be value it for the immersive AR beneficial properties you expertise. At $600, it’s onerous to complain in regards to the picture high quality, and I hope knowledgeable model will come.

The change between VR and AR modes is exceptionally handy relying in your use case (more use cases here). Lynx made it potential to “flip-up” the optics similarly to navy night time imaginative and prescient goggles (NVG). As a developer, it’s one thing I’d need to “flip up and fix code.”

The 500g weight of the headset makes it comparatively snug, and I may think about carrying one for prolonged durations, presumably so long as three hours: that’s the theoretical battery life.

Inside, it’s powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2, an 8-core chip with an Adreno 650 GPU backed by 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. I’m unsure how a lot of the Qualcomm Extended Reality SDK Lynx makes use of, however that equipment gives most of the options seen within the demo.

Overall, that was an important demo. I didn’t have time to strive video games or different apps, however in one other dialogue with Qualcomm executives, I instructed that it’d be nice to make use of Snapdragon XR gadgets with PC VR video games to squeeze extra worth from these cellular XR headsets.

In any case, Qualcomm’s dedication to the XR trade is paying large time as its platform powers a few of the largest names, together with Facebook and Lenovo.

Filed in Computers. Read extra about Augmented Reality (AR), GDC, Qualcomm and Virtual Reality (VR).