Rendering in VR demands that hardware and applications maintain very high frame rates. A typical PCVR (PC and VR) setup comprises a PC connected to a head-mounted device (HMD) and a pair of hand-held controllers that must all function in real-time. This setup must contend with fluid controller and game movements, 6DoF animations, head movements, and two render passes (one per eye) at 90 to 120 FPS. Switch this setup to a wireless HMD, and the communications channel (e.g., Wi-Fi, 5G, etc.) must also be up to the task of real-time data transfer.

Last year, Qualcomm collaborated with Guy Godin, creator of Virtual Desktop, to enhance PCVR rendering performance. Qualcomm added Space Warp functionality to their Adreno Motion Engine which runs on all headsets powered by the Snapdragon XR2 and its Qualcomm Adreno GPU. Space Warp produces missing frames just-in-time on the HMD with no PC overhead, thus reducing PC-to-HMD bandwidth and stress on the encoder. This doubles the available PC render time and the effective encoder bitrate for PCVR-to-HMD streaming.