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Amazon Sumerian: A way to create VR, AR, and 3D experiences

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Re: Amazon Sumerian: A way to create VR, AR, and 3D experiences

#51

Post by grogenaut »

simias wrote: post #44
avar wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is Amazon really getting value > out of all the dev time they are > putting into building game engines? What an odd way to think about projects like these. It seems obvious that the answer is "of course not, yet ". You could have asked the same question about AWS in 2001. Why is a bookstore putting all this effort into some online hosting platform for third parties?

AWS was reusing their existing infrastructure and expertise and opening it up to 3rd parties. I'm unclear why Amazon needs a custom game engine. They must have some plans to enter this area, maybe make their own VR headsets?

Not really. They mostly built a second parallel system for aws and moved to using it several years after launch. Yes they used knowledge that existed in house but it was a totally separate project and mini company

Re: Amazon Sumerian: A way to create VR, AR, and 3D experiences

#52

Post by neya »

I have a different perspective on all this. Alibaba, recently did something with VR[1][2] Shopping and had good success with it (in China). I think, Amazon might simply be trying to experiment with it to see if it works outside of China. And for this, of course, they need a platform to build on, just like they did with AWS.

I'm also quite curious to know how all this turns out. If we'll be seeing "Total Recall" style ads around us, thanks to Amazon, Google and Facebook, then in which case, we're screwed.

[1] http://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2016/11/28/alibaba-vr-sh...

[2] http://www.thedrum.com/news/2017/07/18/alibaba-merges-online...

Re: Amazon Sumerian: A way to create VR, AR, and 3D experiences

#53

Post by [deleted] »

avar wrote: post #20
modeless wrote: post #3

Looks heavily influenced by Unity. Kinda random that Amazon is building a web based Unity competitor. Doubly weird when you consider that this is their second game engine project. They are already building one called Amazon Lumberyard, forked from the serious AAA game engine CryEngine [1], and it appears at first glance to be entirely separate from this one. Is Amazon really getting value out of all the dev time they…

> Is Amazon really getting value > out of all the dev time they are > putting into building game engines? What an odd way to think about projects like these. It seems obvious that the answer is "of course not, yet ". You could have asked the same question about AWS in 2001. Why is a bookstore putting all this effort into some online hosting platform for third parties?

[deleted]

Re: Amazon Sumerian: A way to create VR, AR, and 3D experiences

#54

Post by synthmeat »

modeless wrote: post #3

Looks heavily influenced by Unity. Kinda random that Amazon is building a web based Unity competitor. Doubly weird when you consider that this is their second game engine project. They are already building one called Amazon Lumberyard, forked from the serious AAA game engine CryEngine [1], and it appears at first glance to be entirely separate from this one. Is Amazon really getting value out of all the dev time they…

Virtual shopping malls via VR and better product information through AR.

Re: Amazon Sumerian: A way to create VR, AR, and 3D experiences

#55

Post by wastedhours »

simias wrote: post #44
avar wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is Amazon really getting value > out of all the dev time they are > putting into building game engines? What an odd way to think about projects like these. It seems obvious that the answer is "of course not, yet ". You could have asked the same question about AWS in 2001. Why is a bookstore putting all this effort into some online hosting platform for third parties?

AWS was reusing their existing infrastructure and expertise and opening it up to 3rd parties. I'm unclear why Amazon needs a custom game engine. They must have some plans to enter this area, maybe make their own VR headsets?

But look at all of the other additions on top of AWS now - you're not just getting bare metals, you're getting an entire stack from the machine to the speech output. They have the bare metal, they're just ramping up the value adds in verticals they know can be huge (plus, building... and I hate the word... synergies with Twitch).

All of that CryEngine expertise was probably going to go down the toilet - am going to assume it's been comparatively cheap for them to get a AAA game engine into their locker.

Re: Amazon Sumerian: A way to create VR, AR, and 3D experiences

#56

Post by pjmlp »

veli_joza wrote: post #48
cheeaun wrote: post #30

omg took me some time to find the actual product page: https://aws.amazon.com/sumerian/

Welcome to the future! Throught the magic of Virtual Reality, we can now transform your boring 2D slides into perspective-mapped boring 2D slides [1]! Incredible! /s [1] https://d1.awsstatic.com/product-marketing/Sumerian/sumerian...

So basically the VRML demos are back.

Re: Amazon Sumerian: A way to create VR, AR, and 3D experiences

#57

Post by kenshi »

simias wrote: post #44
avar wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is Amazon really getting value > out of all the dev time they are > putting into building game engines? What an odd way to think about projects like these. It seems obvious that the answer is "of course not, yet ". You could have asked the same question about AWS in 2001. Why is a bookstore putting all this effort into some online hosting platform for third parties?

AWS was reusing their existing infrastructure and expertise and opening it up to 3rd parties. I'm unclear why Amazon needs a custom game engine. They must have some plans to enter this area, maybe make their own VR headsets?

VR online shopping could be a massive thing one day.

Re: Amazon Sumerian: A way to create VR, AR, and 3D experiences

#58

Post by apsdsm »

stesch wrote: post #19
ane wrote: post #2

The name has to be a reference to Snow Crash .

WARNING: "Snow Crash" is a comedy! Over the years people mentioned the book in comments about metaverses and VR. But nobody said it was a comedy. I was buying it with the expectation of getting some serious science fiction about a topic I'm interested in. Instead it starts off with some pizza delivery science fiction parody.

Man, I could really go some pizza delivery science fiction parody right about now...

Re: Amazon Sumerian: A way to create VR, AR, and 3D experiences

#59

Post by gbrits »

A bit at a tangent, but I was recently looking for software (open source or commercial) that could help me develop a 'interior design / planning' editor. I.e.: given a specific area (outside dimensions), allow to drag walls, doors, etc to create a floorplan, and given that, allow more detailed planning like kitchen, bathroom appliances, etc. Ideally, this would result in a 3d-model which could be imported in a tool like Amazon Sumerian to do a 3d-walkthrough. Any advice on where to look?

Re: Amazon Sumerian: A way to create VR, AR, and 3D experiences

#60

Post by andruby »

ehnto wrote: post #22
modeless wrote: post #3

Looks heavily influenced by Unity. Kinda random that Amazon is building a web based Unity competitor. Doubly weird when you consider that this is their second game engine project. They are already building one called Amazon Lumberyard, forked from the serious AAA game engine CryEngine [1], and it appears at first glance to be entirely separate from this one. Is Amazon really getting value out of all the dev time they…

StarCitizen is based on Lumberyard now. In theory, any game using the right versions of CryEngine can move to Lumberyard as well, for whatever reason they might choose to do that.

Really? It seems like they keep refactoring all the time. Feels like Duke Nukem whenever, which switched engines a couple of times too during development.
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