NVIDIA’s CloudXR platform envisions a future where high-end virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) content can be streamed directly to devices so they can be made lightweight and mobile, rather than being tethered. In its latest update, CloudXR 3.0, NVIDIA has implemented bidirectional audio support to make environments immersive whilst aiding social interactions.
The addition of bidirectional audio is an important step for CloudXR as it allows real-time communication. This is not only essential for social apps in general but especially important where enterprise collaboration is involved, enabling colleagues around the world to naturally talk to one another.
This area is of particular focus for NVIDIA as it’s also working on the Omniverse Enterprise platform. With bidirectional audio not only can those in VR interact but it fully supports mobile devices for the widest platform support. Alongside mobile CloudXR also supports PC headsets like HTC Vive, Oculus Quest and Windows Mixed Reality. Early testers of CloudXR 3.0 include Autodesk and Accenture who’ve trialled the platform on their design and training software respectively.
“NVIDIA CloudXR is opening new ways for VRED to bring even more people together in collaborative experiences by reducing dependency on hardware and location,” said Lukas Faeth, senior product manager of Automotive Visualization at Autodesk in a statement. “We can’t wait to see where this technology will take automotive design and review workflows for Autodesk VRED users.”
“We tested CloudXR 3.0 and experienced great performance with complex training apps originally built of tethered XR. The addition of bidirectional audio for collaboration will take cloud rendered collaborative XR experiences to the next level,” adds Nicola Rosa, extended reality lead at Accenture in Europe. “With the latest CloudXR 3.0 release, we can finally start designing XR apps for the cloud without any limitation.”
In addition to the bidirectional audio support the NVIDIA CloudXR 3.0 update also includes:
- iOS client improvements including world origin updates
- Asynchronous connection support, so clients are kept responsive during connection establishment
- In the Wave
VR client, improving colour and gamma handling - Updated Windows SDK from 8.1 to 10
- Multiple API changes — see CloudXR SDK API for additional details
- Various bug fixes and optimizations
To learn more about NVIDIA’s plans for 5G and more head on over to Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2021 this week. Ronnie Vasishta, senior vice president of telecommunications at NVIDIA, will be giving an in-depth talk at the event. And for further CloudXR updates, keep reading VRFocus.