Simulated worlds

Spatial computing, Simulation, Digital twins technologies have been slowly maturing for years, but the everyday impact has been limited. This is quickly changing, and in 2023, the cloud will make these technologies more accessible, in turn enabling a new class of use cases that will be unbound by physical constraints.

Simulations are used to build better race cars, predict weather, and model the stock market. While the problems that simulations can solve are significant, the difficulty of building and running simulations is a barrier for everyday use cases. Companies are constrained by the need for high-powered hardware and a specialized workforce.

Take a fluid dynamics simulation for a jet wing or race car as an example, where it may take up to 150 TB of data just to simulate one second of a real-world scenario. However, AWS is already into this space with SimSpace Weaver, the first of many simulation technologies that will pave the way for a future where nearly anything in our world can, and eventually will, be simulated.

Simulations will help us make better decisions about the roadways we construct, the ways we organize our warehouses, with simulation, we can peer into the future to see the impacts of our efforts, running numerous what-if scenarios that answer our questions without having to wait and see what the impact might be many years down the line.

Another area where there is a rapid uptick in innovation is spatial computing. Companies are already building specialized hardware and using cloud technologies to capture and create 3D models of nearly any environment. Doing this with just a mobile device will soon be a reality. This democratization will inspire a new wave of innovations in the architecture, construction, commercial real estate, and retail industries.

Like video did for the internet, spatial computing will rapidly advance in the coming years to a point where 3D objects and environments are as easy to create and consume as your favourite short-form social media videos are today.

In 2023, technologies like these will begin to converge. With the increasing integration of digital technologies in our physical world, simulation becomes more important to ensure that spatial computing technologies have the right impact. The cloud, through its massive scale and accessibility, will drive this next era.