New software brings high-quality VR to smartphones

High-end VR needs to render each frame at a rate of at least 16 milliseconds, or 60 frames per second. However, the CPUs of top smartphones such as Google’s Pixel XL are only capable of speeds around 110 milliseconds. Today’s leading VR systems use headsets tethered to powerful computers, as wireless networks are not able to transmit rendered frames fast enough.

“Today’s mobile hardware and wireless networks are about 10 times too slow for high-quality, immersive VR,” said Y Charlie Hu, a Purdue University professor of electrical and computer engineering.

“A key observation we made is that waiting for next-generation wireless networks such as 5G will not help because packet processing at 10 times higher data rate will exhaust the CPU on today’s smartphones.”

To deliver high-end, untethered VR via a smartphone, Furion employs innovative solutions. A large part of the computational load in VR apps is rendering the background for each frame. But the background – a landscape or the inside of a room – doesn’t vary much from frame to frame. When it does change, it is generally in relation to the user’s position.