Exploring the Spatial Computing Spectrum:

Entering a new phase of technological innovation, where spatial computing is becoming the key driver of change. Spatial computing is the fusion of the digital and physical worlds, enabling users to interact with digital content in a natural and immersive way. This technology has applications in various domains, such as gaming, film and media, simulation, and the metaverse. To unlock the full potential of spatial computing, four segments are critical: 3D Content Creation, Games, Simulation, and Geospatial. By providing better tools and cloud services for these segments, spatial computing will create new opportunities for how people work, play, and live.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is at the forefront of building the foundational blocks of spatial computing. In this blog post, I will explain what spatial computing is and how AWS is shaping the future with this game-changing technology through 3D Content Creation, Games, Simulation, and Geospatial.

Spatial computing is the technology that bridges the gap between the virtual and physical worlds. It allows users to interact with digital content in a way that matches their physical environment, by virtualizing the real world and augmenting it with digital information. This technology enhances how we visualize, simulate, and interact with data in physical or virtual spaces. As Amazon VP of Technology, Bill Vass, said in his post, “The Best way to Predict the Future is to Simulate it”, “spatial computing is what powers collaborative experiences.”

Spatial computing has applications across different industries and sectors. Some examples are digital twins that show real-time data, MMO video games that create immersive worlds, or AI/ML models that learn from laser scans of entire cities. These applications have common technical requirements, standards, workflows, and challenges.

Making art in the cloud 3D digital content creation is the core of spatial computing. AWS enables customers to focus more on creating stunning works of art and less on managing hardware and render farms. Whether it is producing cutting-edge CG shots for feature films, like “Avatar: The Way of Water”, or hiring the best talent from around the world by moving production to the cloud, AWS solutions and services have enabled creatives to entertain audiences.

Producing art in the cloud AWS Media Services have helped customers to produce digital content and build live and on-demand video workflows for the most successful Hollywood productions. AWS Thinkbox Deadline is the industry standard for compute render management that is scalable and flexible. With Deadline, customers have been able to switch from on-premise render farms to the cloud, allowing artists to work faster and deliver shots in hours instead of days.

In the last few years, customers have moved from teams that are located in one place to teams that are spread around the world. This has enabled studios to hire the best creators regardless of their time zones. AWS Studio in the Cloud solutions have been the foundations that have empowered studios as they transition to distributed, global teams. Learning from these transitions, AWS tools and services have improved to make it easier to use the cloud to produce 3D content. AWS is focused on providing core cloud infrastructure and resources so customers can speed up workflows and more effectively produce the next generation of 3D content.

AWS is looking ahead to see what is coming. The cloud has been used by studios around the world to produce amazing works of art in hours instead of days. The lessons we have learned from working with our customers on these are being applied further to bring more scalability, availability, and the compute power of the cloud for new forms of cinematic production, interactive experience, and video games.

Gaming for everyone Video games have grown enormously in the last five years and AWS has been there to help game developers of all sizes to scale and grow. From indie game studios like Blinkmoon Games to the biggest studios in the industry like Epic Games, both of whom are fully committed to AWS, AWS provides the tools and resources needed to scale games to global audiences.

Today, Fortnite, developed by Epic Games, runs almost completely on AWS. Using tens of thousands of Amazon EC2 instances powered by AWS Graviton processors, Epic Games supports millions of players globally every day. This year, Epic Games worked with AWS to support more Fortnite players through AWS Local Zones. Now running on AWS Local Zones, players across the central United States and Mexico will enjoy low latency gameplay with the new North America (NA) Central Fortnite region. At AWS, we are excited to see what Fortnite players will make as gameplay features and cloud services grow.

No matter the size of the team, Amazon GameLift can be used to provide dedicated real-time servers for session-based multiplayer games. Whether developers want full control and customization of the servers or simple, ready-to-use game servers that eliminate the hassle of the custom game server deployment process, Amazon GameLift can help teams get their games to market.

As real-time 3D experiences have expanded from games to other business verticals, we have seen more customers using AWS for Games solutions. AWS partner, Surreal Events, uses AWS to deliver and scale end-to-end metaverse solutions to customers around the world. With AWS, developers building any kind of real-time 3D experiences can bring collaboration at scale to their end-users as they grow their virtual worlds.

Simulating the future In recent years, we have seen almost every business vertical use some form of simulation. Whether it is life sciences, financial services, oil and gas, design, engineering, climate sciences, or autonomous vehicles. As our systems become more complex, spatial simulations are essential to providing insights into our physical world. In the past, spatial simulations were limited to a single piece of hardware and scaling simulations to support millions of entities was a very difficult task for developers.

This is why last year AWS launched a new simulation technology focused service: AWS SimSpace Weaver. With this new service, AWS developers can gain understanding from city-scale 3D simulations. SimSpace Weaver makes it easy to run large-scale spatial simulations in the cloud by managing simulations across compute infrastructure. This means developers can concentrate on building the simulations and applications instead of provisioning and maintaining cloud infrastructure. In addition, SimSpace Weaver offers integrations for popular real-time 3D engines so developers can create immersive, interactive experiences, allowing their teams to understand real-world scenarios.

Collaborating with uCrowds, a leader in large-scale crowd simulations, AWS have demonstrated the potential of scaling, running, and visualizing real-world simulations, with millions of simulated humans walking the streets of Las Vegas, NV. By simulating at this scale, AWS teams gained a better understanding of the effect that population surges have on our physical city infrastructure.

To quote Amazon CTO, Werner Vogels, from AWS re:Invent 2022, we think simulation is essential as physical and virtual become indistinguishable and we hope developers start simulating everything.

Finding geospatial data everywhere Throughout history maps have been crucial in defining new frontiers and will continue to be with improvements from spatial computing. In our interconnected world, maps define routes, locations, and boundaries for goods and services. The geospatial data provided by maps has become more important as businesses navigate cities, track packages, and route vehicles or fleets of autonomous last-mile delivery robotics.

In 2021 AWS launched Amazon Location Service, a fully managed service that helps developers easily and securely add maps, points of interest, geocoding, routing, tracking, and geofencing to applications without compromising data security, user privacy, or cost. Amazon Location has added location functionality for use cases ranging from map-based visualization, resource tracking, delivery, and location-aware user engagement with geomarketing.

AWS is not stopping at maps. To bring more understanding, insights, and contextual information to applications, AWS has also enhanced Amazon SageMaker, allowing developers to build, train, and deploy ML models faster using geospatial data.

Combined with the AWS Open Data Program, terabytes of open-source LiDAR point cloud data can be used to train AI/ML models for new geospatial workloads. Whether training a fleet of autonomous vehicles, delivery robots, or looking to gain insight from the physical world, Geospatial ML with Amazon SageMaker empowers development teams to analyze geospatial data and explore model predictions with an interactive map using 3D accelerated graphics.

With spatial computing, the next generation of applications will bring deeper insights and contextual data to the physical world around us. AWS services, like Amazon Location and SageMaker, are already being used by developers to overlay our virtual world on our physical.

The spatial revolution is already underway, led by AWS customers of all sizes and across all business lines. With 3D contextual data and the power and scale of the AWS cloud, our virtual and physical worlds are becoming seamlessly combined driving change in how we work, live, and play. As AI/ML becomes more accessible, generative AI services on AWS could allow anyone to become a creator extending our physical world with 3D virtual content.

Through four technology segments, 3D Content Creation, Games, Simulation, and Geospatial, AWS is working with developers to shape the future. As NCLOUD3 teams with AWS teams look to the future, we aim to pioneer new tools and cloud services that will push the envelope for the next frontier of technological innovation, empowering developers everywhere to build the future.