Amazon has a new AWS service, AWS SimSpace Weaver, which allows users to build massive simulations that look like real SimCity maps. The idea of this new service is that users can take advantage of Amazon’s massive AWS resources to run simulations that can scale across multiple servers without running into compute or memory limitations, which could be useful for things like modeling foot traffic around a new sports stadium.
You can see AWS SimSpace Weaver in action in this impressive video demo from uCrowds, which simulates 1 million people walking through Las Vegas. Combining geospatial data with the hordes of simulated people, it can give you an idea of how people might move through the city’s computerized streets if they were all released at once. With 1 million people, there are “simply not enough walkways” to fit them, according to the video, and even bring that number down to 50,000 shows where people start to come together.
“Previously, if a customer wanted to scale up their spatial simulation, they had to balance the accuracy of the simulation with the capability of their hardware, which limited the usefulness of what they could learn,” Bill Vass, vice president of technology at AWS, said in a press release. “AWS SimSpace Weaver removes the burden of managing simulation infrastructure, simplifying how customers run large-scale simulations and freeing them to focus on differentiated content creation and expanding access to simulation development .”
AWS SimSpace Weaver also integrates with the popular development engines Unreal Engine 5 (which had its own showpiece in town The Matrix awakens) and Unity, which means it could be much more appealing for developers to actually use it.
