Amazon Sumerian lets you build VR/AR spaces in a browser—with an AI guide

Amazon has announced a browser-based toolkit called Sumerian that the company hopes will make virtual reality and augmented reality development accessible to people without advanced coding or 3D rendering skills. Currently, in the preview, Sumerian allows the creation of VR and AR scenes that target platforms like the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and Google Daydream, and it works with several other Amazon products.

Built on Amazon Web Services, the toolkit is intended to help with building experiences like "training simulations, virtual concierge services, enhanced online shopping experiences, [and] virtual house or land tours." Of course, it can be used to make games, too. In any case, users of the toolkit can create animated characters that interact with the player or customer verbally. That's thanks to Amazon's existing speech recognition and natural-language-processing tech—Lex and Polly, respectively

Amazon is joining a chorus of platforms and companies investing in AR development. Apart from Microsoft's Windows Mixed Reality platform, you also have ARKit, ARCore, and various game development platforms and engines. Sumerian supports Apple's ARKit, which is an augmented reality platform for iOS devices. Support for Google's ARCore platform is coming, but not yet available—the same goes for Unity, a popular cross-platform, game-development platform.

However, Unity Labs EVP Sylvio Drouin told Ars last year that the Unity Labs team has focused heavily on making its own way for creatives to build VR worlds without advanced technical knowledge. "You could be entirely in VR without ever touching the Editor, without ever setting any texture, shader, or global illumination parameters, and you would start to be able to assemble a game,” he said. Meanwhile, Apple CEO Tim Cook has said he believes AR will be as significant in the industry as the introduction of Apple's own App Store.

Like Unity's initiatives, Sumerian involves dragging and dropping assets, and it offers a visual scripting option. That said, it is built on the WebGL JavaScript and WebVR JavaScript APIs, and it offers a JavaScript editor and scripting library.

Sumerian is free to use, but it's built on AWS, which means you need an existing AWS account and you'll be charged for services related to that platform if you use more than is allotted to a free account. You can request access to the preview with your AWS account number, but be warned: access is invite-only. So it's not certain you'll gain access right away.