Why Amazon is Betting on Virtual and Augmented Reality

In a recent PCMag article, Rob Marvin got hands-on with the Amazon Sumerian 3D development platform for building AR/VR apps and gives an in-depth overview of its features and the company's broader Immersive Technology strategy. According to Marvin, Amazon's decision to enter the AR/VR space with their Sumerian platform came down to a convergence of three factors: the emergence of smartphone-based augmented reality; untapped VR opportunities in the business-to-business (B2B) market; and helping AWS customers solve pain points with things they were already trying to do: "The B2B applications include scenarios like interactive digital signage (think the giant talking hologram ads from Blade Runner: 2049), virtual training, and a host of industrial Internet of Things use cases, such as using sensors to create digital twins and complex simulations.The idea is that you have a high-quality, high-definition, context-aware sensor in the hands of billons of people." One of Sumerian's biggest selling points, Marvin explains, is that despite how powerful the editor is, there's nothing to download or install. During the demo, Sumerian loaded from a browser URL in seconds. Even doing real-time natural language processing (NLP) and rendering elaborate animations didn't slow it down much.