Qualcomm Technologies recently introduced a new virtual reality development kit or VRDK, for its Snapdragon 835 mobile platform. This gives developers early access to a VR head mounted display or HMD, built with the chipset that is supported with a new version of VR software development kit or SDK, that works with the HMD.

According to PR Newswire, the VRDK will be provided to developers to accelerate a new generation of 360-degree VR videos, VR games and several interactive education, healthcare and entertainment applications.

Cristiano Amon, executive vice president of Qualcomm, stated that, "We see great potential for the exciting new experiences made possible by truly mobile, untethered virtual reality that's always connected to the internet, and we're excited to help mobile VR developers more efficiently deliver compelling and high-quality experiences on upcoming Snapdragon 835 VR-capable products."

The Snapdragon 835 is very well capable of bringing immersive VR experiences, although extreme power consumption limitations and other challenging performance requirements need to be improved in order to achieve this.

The HMD includes a 4MP WQHD AMOLED display with a 2560x1440 resolution, cameras with six degrees of freedom Motion Tracking, eye tracking with two monochromatic VGA global shutter cameras with active depth sensing, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity and a trackpad on the right side.

These are the technologies that are crucial for an optimal VR experience; DSP sensor fusion, Foveated rendering, Fast motion to photon, Stereoscopic rendering with lens correction, VR layering and Advanced Application Profiling and Power management.

The upcoming VR OEM devices built with the Snapdragon 835 are expected to arrive in the second half of the year. Thus, the VRDK should be available in the second quarter of 2017 for the developers to attain improved VR performances and power efficiency by that time.