A Q&A With Qualcomm’s VP of VR and AR; Roblox’s Age-Up

Hugo Swart, VP of VR and AR at Qualcomm. Photo: Qualcomm. Illustration: Mike Sullivan

This morning, Qualcomm announced Snapdragon Spaces, a new set of software tools for developers of AR experiences (and yes, if you’re having deja vu from Monday, Niantic debuted its own AR developer tools yesterday, and they can be used with Spaces). Best known for its mobile chips, the San Diego company has been investing heavily in AR and VR, a smart hedge against competition it faces in the mobile market from Taiwan’s MediaTek, among others.

Snapdragon Spaces is built to handle basic features for head-worn AR/VR devices—like spatial mapping, image recognition and hand tracking—and is specifically made to maximize the performance of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips. In building Spaces, Qualcomm embraced the OpenXR standard and acquired Clay Air, a gesture and hand tracking tech company. Lenovo, Xiaomi and others are expected to use Spaces with smart glasses products next year.