TechTaffy

tech:

taffy

Amazon gets into virtual reality with Sumerian

By TechTaffy Desk

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]

Just in

Series A

Tembo raises $14M

Cincinnati, Ohio-based Tembo, a Postgres managed service provider, has raised $14 million in a Series A funding round.
Around the web

Raspberry Pi is now a public company — TC

Raspberry Pi priced its IPO on the London Stock Exchange on Tuesday morning at £2.80 per share, valuing it at £542 million, or $690 million at today’s exchange rate, writes Romain Dillet. 
Fundings

AlphaSense raises $650M

AlphaSense, a market intelligence and search platform, has raised $650 million in funding, co-led by Viking Global Investors and BDT & MSD Partners.
Around the web

Elon Musk’s xAI raises $6B to take on OpenAI — VentureBeat

Confirming reports from April, the series B investment comes from the participation of multiple known venture capital firms and investors, including Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Andreessen Horowitz (A16z), Sequoia Capital, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal and Kingdom Holding, writes Shubham Sharma. 
IT

Capgemini partners with DARPA to explore quantum computing for carbon capture

Capgemini Government Solutions has launched a new initiative with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to investigate quantum computing's potential in carbon capture.