Experts: Amazon's mixed reality software is a tool, not a solution

GREENSBORO, N.C. — Amazon Web Services’ recent release of Sumerian, its mixed reality software development kit (SDK), may be a shrewd move for the dominating e-tailer, but also more of a tool set than a solution for furniture retailers and manufacturers, according to industry experts.

At its post-Thanksgiving AWS re:Invent conference, Amazon Web Services launched Sumerian, an SDK that functions as a web-based editor for constructing augmented reality, virtual reality and 3D apps for browsers, headsets and mobile devices. Any browser supporting WebGL, Web VR or ARKit graphics renderings will run apps created with Sumerian.

Beck Besecker, co-founder and CEO of Marxent, and Andrew Kemendo, CEO of Pair, an AR and artificial intelligence technology developer, told Furniture Today that most retailers and manufacturers would still need someone with graphics expertise to leverage AWS’ tool kit.

Besecker likened Sumerian to the game engines Unity and Unreal. “It’s like a developer tool that makes it easier and less expensive to create content, but it’s not really a solution,” he said.

Marxent, which specializes in creating mixed reality experiences for furniture shopping and interior design, hosts all of its 3D content on AWS. Marxent created the View in Room AR app for Ashley HomeStores, according to Marxent’s website.

To create an effective AR or VR experience for furniture shoppers and interior designers, Besecker said, “you have to create the 3D assets, onboard them onto a content management system, do QA (quality assurance) on the asset to make sure they match the product, create behavioral data, create a room design tool that the end user can use, (maintain) a data management data base … that’s not what (Sumerian) is.”

Kemendo agreed. Sumerian would allow novices to “create simple scenes with maybe a couple of objects,” he said. “You’re still going to have to have 3D rendering professionals.”

Kemendo’s company Pair developed an AR app that features furniture from retailers such as Wayfair and comes pre-installed on all new iPads.

Likened to a workbench or a set of building blocks by some trade publications, Sumerian, Amazon claims, will empower amateurs to create 3D environments and add objects.

Amazon also stated that Sumerian users incur no costs for software installation, only for cloud storage of 3D assets and traffic generated by the scenes they create. The pricing structure includes a Free Tier, which allows a 50 MB published scene to receive up to 100 monthly views at no charge.

So, what’s in it for Amazon Web Services?

Kemendo said, “They just care that you’re creating content within some Amazon property” because then the companies creating the 3D assets are “more likely to deploy inside Amazon.

“They want to lock people into the Amazon platform, make it easy to deploy (your 3D assets) to another Amazon platform like shopping,” Kemendo said.

Sumerian “only marginally moves the needle and makes it easier” to create good 3D content, Kemendo said, a huge point of friction for potential AR implementers such as retailers.

AR is expected to become a standard part of furniture shopping because it helps shoppers preview high-consideration purchases such as sofas.

“Amazon and Target, they’re not going to create the (3D) content; they don’t want to — there’s too much out there,” Kemendo said. “They want to offload that on to the vendors.”

Offering a tool such as Sumerian, he added, to lower the cost and ease the difficulty of generating 3D content, “is one more thing to make it easier” to keep those vendors on Amazon.

And to keep shoppers returning to Amazon, Besecker said.

Retailers could create inspirational rooms “where you can play with product variants,” Besecker said. However, “the goal that everybody wants is … if I have a digital version of your home in my database, you’re more likely to shop with me.”