In our latest storytelling exploration, we tried Amazon Sumerian new VR platform as a potential narration medium. While this is not our traditional MP mash-up, we chose a more generic topic for this experiment (Seattle homelessness).



This prototype was developed for us by Marisa Erven and I asked her to share some thoughts on the process:

Some First Impressions:
Overall, very viable for early prototyping. Enjoyed the fast ramp up, which was assisted with greatly by documentation created from the AWS the team. Appreciated the ability to create a prototype from start to finish without overtly complex hardware or technical/programming contingencies for someone who is more proficient in a background in 2D/3D content creation!

Platform Considerations:
- Ease of use is high if you understand core game engine, camera use, and 3D content creation
- Creation of content, texture image size awareness is important for consideration.
- Be sure to duplicate scene then relaunch before saving for now, otherwise your work will not be synced with server (known issue)
- Due to continuous upload/save/etc, pertinent to have solid web speeds unless you want to wait
- Script and node event based deployment was very streamline
- Getting the initial setup for speech took a bit to implement the ID for use
- Would like to see more voice variants that sound more naturalistic, as well as more gestures
- Really like the character look-at feature
- Reporting seems transparent and fairly robust, which helps end user troubleshoot on their own
- Loved being able to stub and add a script speech as an option rather than being reliant on full VO integration
- Team has done great with distribution of content to aid in ease of use - both with content and information/learning.