The Snapdragon Spaces™ XR Developer Program gives XR developers the tools they need to create brilliant immersive experiences. With Snapdragon Spaces, developers can create transformative immersive experiences for XR glasses that adapt to our physical realities — revolutionizing the present and future of spatial computing.
With the Snapdragon Spaces Pathfinder program, we’re teaming up with a select group of XR innovators across the globe to stretch the limits of creativity — and reality. From early access to platform technology, project funding, co-marketing and promotion, and dev kits, the Snapdragon Spaces Pathfinder program is committed to helping XR innovators push the boundaries of spatial computing — while merging our physical and digital realities.
To give Snapdragon Insiders a peek behind the curtains, we’re interviewing XR developers that use Snapdragon Spaces to understand how they utilize the technology to build their solutions. We recently caught up with Sébastien Leang, Co-Founder and CTO of Uptale — an XR enterprise training solutions company based in Paris, France, and a member of the Snapdragon Spaces Pathfinder program — to discuss his experience working with Snapdragon Spaces, as well as the future of XR more broadly. Here’s some of what he had to say.
What is Uptale’s elevator pitch?
Uptale is an enterprise solution that enables companies to digitize their field training and improve workforce efficiency using immersive learning in XR. We provide a cloud platform for anyone — even those without any technical background — to create, deliver, and analyze their own training experiences in XR and deploy them at scale. Experiences include 360-degree videos that are also interactive. For example, there are quizzes, complex exercises, critical information, panels or videos, and more advanced interactions that include the use of 3D models. And these experiences can be created in just a few hours, updated with a few clicks, and deployed instantly.
How are XR solutions improving enterprise training programs?
We know that the enterprise world changes a lot. So it's very important to ensure training materials are up to date. For example, if you change a procedure or implement a new rule, you don't want to spend months developing a new training module — you want to be very agile in your creation and updating process. Uptale enables enterprises to do exactly that.
Can you tell us about some real-world success stories?
Sure. We’re working with many customers — more than 200, in fact, including many large-scale enterprise accounts. So we’ve implemented many different real-world scenarios. We’re currently serving a lot of use cases in safety training, standard operating procedures, quality, field visits, sales, or even soft skill scenarios. We’re also present in the education space for different scenarios with schools and universities.
To give a more concrete example: We are working with Stellantis, one of the largest auto manufacturers in the world, to digitize its standard operating procedures on the production line. That allows operators to train employees and run a faster line while eliminating mistakes and increasing productivity. This has allowed Stellantis to easily measure ROI and resulted in training time being cut in half — a huge advantage for any enterprise. It’s also significantly reduced the amount of line stoppages in the production facilities.
What are some of the challenges you’ve run into trying to implement XR training in enterprise settings, and how have you overcome them?
The enterprise XR training space has evolved a lot over the past few years, but it’s very mature now. Virtually everyone in the enterprise world knows about the efficiency of XR training. So we no longer need to prove that part to customers — a big challenge in the past. It’s also been bolstered by an increase in high-quality headsets available on the market; all the major headset manufacturers launched new devices in the past year, so that means demand is booming.
Now, the challenges that we face circulate around large-scale deployments after a successful pilot. So, going from small to big inside a given company. We understand that enterprises that want to implement XR training at scale need to work hand in hand with their IT departments to make sure that they have a smooth and secure deployment of new headsets. It must be easy to order the headsets. It must be easy to securely connect them to Wi-Fi and download all of the training content and configure everything so that it’s ready to use immediately. This is still the big challenge — scaling our solutions within an enterprise.
How did you get involved with the Snapdragon Spaces Pathfinder Program?
We’ve been working closely with most of the VR headset brands, and especially Lenovo, who recommended us to the Snapdragon Spaces XR Developer Platform as well as the Snapdragon Spaces Pathfinder Program. Our initial goal was to port our Uptale Player application on the Lenovo ThinkReality VRX headsets. So that's what we did with Snapdragon Spaces, and it went pretty smoothly.
How has Snapdragon Spaces helped you achieve your XR enterprise training goals?
It was very simple to integrate our app — which is built on Unity — with Snapdragon Spaces. Thanks to the compatibility with the XR plugin management and the XR interaction toolkit, things went very smoothly and we could port our app to the Lenovo ThinkReality VRX headset in a matter of weeks. The performance was excellent, and we could launch quickly.
What specific features of the Snapdragon Spaces Platform are you using most to build out your XR solutions?
Currently, we only use the VR capabilities. So, we’re using Snapdragon Spaces to control the camera and controllers on next-generation VR headsets. We're also working on leveraging the hand tracking feature to enable our users to interact directly with their hands without controllers — so they can manipulate 3D assets and environments directly with their hands.
On top of that, it’s great that Snapdragon Spaces has augmented reality capabilities that make this interactive integration a great investment for us for the future. We plan on adding augmented reality capabilities to our platform, and it will be great to leverage the features of the Snapdragon Spaces SDK, including positional tracking, local anchors, and object recognition.
Where do you see headworn XR going in the next five years?
The adoption of this once exotic technology is already at a late stage in the enterprise world. The early majority is already using VR. And I expect that the late majority will also adopt VR within the next five years.
I think we will see an acceleration of the adoption, probably through mixed-reality headsets. I also think we’ll continue to see the devices getting slimmer, more comfortable, and more powerful. And at some point, I think this will trigger large adoption by the consumer market for many different use cases not just gaming. We're already seeing it happen with gaming. The adoption will be broader.
What advice do you have for up-and-coming XR developers that are considering using Snapdragon Spaces to build out their solutions?
I would say go for it. Snapdragon Spaces is great, easy to use, and the team has been very supportive. It’s been a great experience so far. Since Snapdragon XR platforms are present in most headsets on the market, you can’t go wrong with integrating with this platform.
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