During the Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg between April 4-6, 2016, several recent innovations in in-flight entertainment were discussed – sleek UI interfaces, Android-powered systems, greater utilization of embedded, wireless and BYOD solutions along with immersive technologies and the virtual/augmented reality solutions.

Personalization and contextualization are two essential components of a well-designed in-flight entertainment (IFE) system. Some of the technologies and features discussed to support these endeavors were as follows:

• Large touchscreen built on 4k technology for greater resolution clarity
• Heated seating
• Inductive charging
• Smartphone synchronization enabling users to autonomously manage the IFE to extract best possible on-board experience.
• Controlling everything from the IFE system, lighting and temperature directly using the device.

Among other innovative solutions, an immersive headset that can offer a fixed-screen theatre/cinema-style viewing experience in both 2D and 3D while genuinely helping you forget about your environment scores very high. This can be very useful especially, when you’re flying economy in an overbooked, overcrowded flight.

In addition to hardware, embedded software and user interface plays a very important role for enhanced user experience. The latest Android Lollipop 5.1.1 operating system enables in-flight entertainment devices to respond like a tablet while facilitating the inclusion of highly interactive features.

Advanced heterogeneous and powerful processors like Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 820 have the necessary computing and image processing capabilities to support such VR applications, However, along with hardware features, there is also a need for appropriate firmware and frameworks to utilize the processor’s maximum capability. To address this, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., has recently launched a new virtual reality (VR) software development kit (SDK) for developers to access advanced VR features while helping them attain improved VR performance and power efficiency with the Snapdragon 820.

Eragon 820 enables customers to add layer and depth in their audio-visual requirements for AR/VR with the following features:

• Audio headers that enable Hi-Fi Audio prototyping
• Support for three cameras that enable higher/better pixel quantity and pixel quality based on choice of sensors that are supported
• Eragon 820 supports Sensor Core which enables application developers in VR space to take benefit of Sensor core available on Snapdragon 820

With comprehensive expertise on Qualcomm Snapdragon solutions, eInfochips is a leading provider of engineering services for DO-254, DO-178B, DO-160 and ARP-4754 compliant Avionics systems. To know more about our Eragon solutions and product engineering services you can write to us at marketing@einfochips.com

About Author

Aarohi Desai is a Product and Practice Marketing Manager at eInfochips. She holds a Master's degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Georgia Tech and was working with NVIDIA in Silicon Valley before joining eInfochips. Leveraging her technology domain and experience, she is now focusing on enabling embedded solutions based on Qualcomm Snapdragon Platforms at eInfochips.