Chinese Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) solutions company Iqiyi Smart has released a VR headset and controllers offering users an all-in-one gaming, fitness, and 3D cinema solution.
The head-mounted display of the ‘Iqiyi Dream VR’ employs Nordic’s nRF52832 Bluetooth® Low Energy (Bluetooth LE) System-on-Chip (SoC), while the two handheld controllers use the nRF52833 general purpose multiprotocol SoC. The SoCs provide low latency (<10ms) Bluetooth LE wireless connectivity between the controllers and the headset to create a seamless VR experience.
The six-degrees-of-freedom (6DoF) Iqiyi Dream VR is able to not only track the direction of the user’s head movements, but also their location in physical space, delivering an immersive gaming and fitness solution. From the partner ‘QiYu VR’ iOS and Android smartphone app users can access a library of content including sports, movies, and television shows (which can be viewed using the ‘virtual cinema’ setting, with different options including a classic cinema, an outdoor rooftop and an outdoor stadium), as well as games.
The nRF52833 SoC’s radio architecture provides -95 dBm RX sensitivity (at 1Mbps in Bluetooth LE mode) which helps ensure the connection between the controllers and headset is strong and reliable. The headset is powered by a 5500 mAh battery, providing between two and three hours of use between charges, thanks in part to the ultra low power characteristics of the nRF52832 SoC. The nRF52832 has been engineered to minimize power consumption with features such as the 2.4 GHz radio’s 5.5 mA peak RX/TX currents and a fully-automatic power management system.
Both the nRF52833 SoC and nRF52832 SoC are powered by a 64 MHz, 32-bit Arm® Cortex® M4 processor with floating point unit (FPU), designed to support the complex Floating Point (FP) and Digital Signal Processing (DSP) computations typical of high-end applications. The nRF Connect SDK [Software Development Kit] is recommended for both nRF52832 and nRF52833 software development. It integrates the Zephyr RTOS and supports applications using Bluetooth LE, Bluetooth mesh and Thread.
“With the popularity of Metaverse, we are seeing strong demand for VR solutions in the gaming and video industry,” says Leon Wu, Nordic’s Regional Sales Manager for North and East China. “Iqiyi Smart is one of the resourceful companies taking advantage of Nordic’s low latency wireless technology to improve the user experience in the VR world.
“I look forward to seeing Nordic LE Audio and Wi-Fi 6 wireless technology bringing even further innovation to Iqiyi Smart’s VR products in the future.”
“While developing our application code, Nordic’s comprehensive SDK allowed us to develop faster and more efficiently,” says Bin Wang, Senior Product Director, Iqiyi Smart. “The reference designs and detailed technical information were also extremely useful.
“We selected the nRF52833 and nRF5232 SoCs based on their battery life, processing power and low latency capabilities. The SoCs offered outstanding performance and Nordic’s after-sales support was also excellent.”
Short-range wireless connectivity is integral to these systems and both Bluetooth Low Energy and 2.4GHz proprietary offer compelling and complimentary use cases. The nRF52 Series multiprotocol SoCs can support both of these technologies simultaneously making them a very suitable family of devices for VR/AR applications.
