One of the features that is included in the latest Snapdragon 645, from Qualcomm, is Andreno foveation, a set of circuits for optimising gaze recognition and eye tracking. According to Jon Peddie’s TechWatch, the technology uses a tile-based approach that conceptually breaks up the images into areas and the detail level is reduced as the image tile is further away from where the user is looking. The chip also supports Multiview rendering that does not render dual images, but copies the rendered image from the left eye to the right eye, but modifies position-dependent information. This saves a lot of processor power. Finally, the chip also has fine grain pre-emption which allows a more important function to interrupt a less critical one to improve latency – a key issue in AR and VR.
The image processor also has been optimised for 3D depth sensing and Qualcomm has been working with Magic Leap on hand tracking.
Analyst Comment
Tobii told us at CES that it is working with a lot of major companies to put eye-tracking into headsets this year. We’re looking forward to the demonstrations at MWC! (BR)
