Launches AR Games Studio, developer challenge and AR SDK to further technology.
At the Uplinq conference in San Diego, Qualcomm's CEO Paul Jacobs revealed that the firm would be putting its considerable weight behind AR – in particular 'vision-based AR' that reveals virtual items on a physical surface (usually a mat of some kind illustrated with related images).
Because Qualcomm plays a part in the entire mobile ecosystem from network tech to chipsets to graphics processing and content discovery, it feels it can bring much to the proliferation of augmented reality.
This is why it revealed an AR SDK around its high power Snapdragon processor, its 1GHZ chip which is currently in 140 product designs.
It's also opening a games studio dedicated to furthering the tech and a developer competition to encourage product innovation with a total prize fund of £100k. The results will be revealed at MWC next year.
At Uplinq, Qualcomm showed some possible ideas. It invited execs from Mattel to show off a boxing game based on the 40 years 'rock em sock em' game that was played by mechanical robots.
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Mattel will continue to work on concepts, and hinted that classics like Barbie and Hot Wheels could be next.
In order to accelerate support for Qualcomm's AR platform, the firm has collaborated with game engine developer Unity Technologies, which will include it as an add-on to Unity for Android.
