Qualcomm took the wraps off a new VR development kit based on its Snapdragon 845 platform.

The kit will include hardware in the form of a standalone VR headset along with a software development kit (SDK), with support for key VR features including motion mapping and eye tracking. Hiren Bhinde, Qualcomm’s director of product management, said in a statement the kit is designed to mitigate “some of the hassles of optimising virtual reality content for mobile deployment”.

Several reports state the headset’s specifications comprise an AMOLED WQHD display, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity. Motion tracking is handled by a pair of 1MP monochrome cameras along with a fisheye lens, while eye tracking uses two monochrome VGA units.

The software side of the kit includes complementary capabilities, such as room-scale six degrees of freedom (6DoF) with simultaneous localisation and mapping to enable freedom of movement, and a boundary system to help VR developers accurately visualise real-world space constraints into VR.

Tobii EyeCore eye tracking algorithms are paired with foveated rendering, which produces a less detailed picture outside the centre of the user’s field of vision, to reduce the compute power needed from the hardware.

Qualcomm said the whole package will become available sometime in the second quarter, but did not share a specific date or price details.