Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched Amazon Sumerian, a new service for developers to build Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and 3D applications, and run them on mobile devices, head-mounted displays, digital signage, or web browsers.

With Amazon Sumerian, developers can:

• Design immersive VR, AR, and 3D environments— Sumerian’s editor allows developers to drag and drop 3D objects (e.g. furniture, buildings, and natural objects) and characters into “scenes” (e.g. rooms, office environments, and landscapes). Developers can choose from Sumerian’s library of pre-built objects, download and import objects from third-party asset repositories such as Sketchfab or Turbosquid, or create and import their own objects. Sumerian also includes templates with pre-populated scenes, says Amazon.
• Create animated characters powered by AWS AI services—Developers can use Sumerian to create animated 3D characters that can guide users through a scene by narrating scripts or answering questions. Sumerian is integrated with Amazon Lex and Amazon Polly, which provide automatic speech recognition (ASR), natural language understanding (NLU), and text-to-speech capabilities.
• Deploy applications to VR and AR hardware— Sumerian scenes run in browsers that support WebGL or WebVR graphics rendering. Sumerian scenes are hosted in the AWS cloud and served from a publicly accessible endpoint.

The announcement was made at the company’s annual re: Invent event currently happening in Las Vegas, Nevada.

[Image courtesy: Amazon]