Cloud services and platforms that enable building augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) experiences by providing the compute power, 3D rendering, spatial anchoring, and content delivery needed for immersive applications. Like having a movie studio's special effects department available on demand, these services handle the heavy processing of overlaying digital content onto the real world or creating fully virtual environments. AWS offers Amazon Sumerian for AR/VR creation, Azure provides Spatial Anchors and Remote Rendering for mixed reality, and various cloud-based tools support building immersive training, retail, and entertainment applications.
A furniture retailer builds an AR shopping experience where customers can visualize sofas and tables in their living room using their phone camera. The cloud service handles the 3D model rendering, spatial awareness, and real-time light estimation so the virtual furniture looks natural in the customer's actual room, running smoothly even on mid-range smartphones.
Azure offers dedicated cloud services for shared spatial anchors and server-side rendering. AWS previously offered Amazon Sumerian for building AR/VR scenes but it has been discontinued; AR/VR workloads on AWS typically use general compute, storage, and streaming services plus third-party engines. Google provides ARCore Cloud Anchors for persistent/shared AR anchoring (often used alongside Google Cloud for backend). OCI does not have a widely adopted, first-party AR cloud product; implementations typically rely on OCI compute/networking with third-party AR platforms.