What you need to know
- Today Niantic and Qualcomm announced a partnership at Qualcomm Technologies' annual Snapdragon Technology Summit 2019.
- This partnership will involve optimization for both Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ XR2 Platform and Niantic Real World Platform.
- While this platform will first be seen on new phones, the plan is to eventually make the jump to new hardware, including AR Glasses.
Today Niantic and Qualcomm announced a partnership at Qualcomm Technologies' annual Snapdragon Technology Summit 2019. The two companies have a multi-year plan to advance and innovate the world of AR (augmented reality), VR (virtual reality) and MR (mixed reality) with the end goal of introducing new AR hardware, including AR Glasses.
This partnership will span over two platforms at first, before moving beyone Qualcomm and Niantic. Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ XR2 Platform is the first of its kind, a 5G-supported XR platform that promises to use XR, 5G and AI to bring about the cutting edge in XR development. This platform will provide the support for XR that can be scaled across AR, VR, and MR. Meanwhile Niantic's Real World Platform, the basis for the highly successful global AR games Ingress, Pokémon Go, and Harry Potter Wizards Unite, includes an AR-first SDK which provides an immersive user experience and integrated cloud services. It is responsible for the necessary scale to support millions of concurrent users in a shared AR experience. By combining these two platforms, Niantic and Qualcomm aim to develop new harware, software, and cloud components leading to the eventual release of AR Glasses which will work with Niantic's properties, as well as others.
Developers who work through the Niantic Creator Program announced last month will also have access to this massive platform as they create their own location-based and AR experiences. Interested developers are encouraged to apply at Niantic.dev.
