Though still in its infancy, the metaverse has received a boost with the formation of The Metaverse Standards Forum to cooperate on interoperability standards needed to build the open metaverse.
Open for free to any organisation, the forum will focus on pragmatic, action-based projects such as implementation prototyping, hackathons, plugfests, and open-source tooling to accelerate the testing and adoption of metaverse standards, while also developing consistent terminology and deployment guidelines.
It founding members include 0xSenses, Academy Software Foundation, Adobe, Alibaba, Autodesk, Avataar, Blackshark.ai, CalConnect, Cesium, Daly Realism, Disguise, the Enosema Foundation, Epic Games, the Express Language Foundation, Huawei, IKEA, Jon Peddie Research, Khronos, Lamina1, Maxon, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA, OpenAR Cloud, the Open Geospatial Consortium, Otoy, Perey Research and Consulting, Qualcomm Technologies, Ribose, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Spatial Web Foundation, Unity, VerseMaker, Wayfair, the Web3D Consortium, the World Wide Web Consortium, and the XR Association.
The metaverse is motivating the novel integration and deployment of diverse technologies for collaborative spatial computing, such as interactive 3D graphics, augmented and virtual reality, photorealistic content authoring, geospatial systems, end-user content tooling, digital twins, real-time collaboration, physical simulation, online economies, and multi-user gaming at new levels of scale and immersiveness.
“The metaverse will bring together diverse technologies, requiring a constellation of interoperability standards, created and maintained by many standards organisations. The Metaverse Standards Forum is a unique venue for coordination between standards organisations and industry, with a mission to foster the pragmatic and timely standardization that will be essential to an open and inclusive metaverse,” said Neil Trevett, President of Khronos, which is hosting the forum with meetings expected to start in July 2022.
Forum activities will be directed by the needs and interests of its members and may involve diverse technology domains such as 3D assets and rendering, human interface and interaction paradigms such as AR and VR, user created content, avatars, identity management, privacy, and financial transactions.
“Alibaba is pleased to join The Metaverse Standards Forum which encourages collaboration on interoperability standards of the open metaverse. We look forward to sharing our technology knowhow and joining global industry leaders to accelerate constructive dialogues to advance new initiatives in the metaverse space,” said Tan Ping, Head of XR Lab at Alibaba DAMO Academy.
“We are thrilled to help launch the Metaverse Standards Forum, a collaborative industry-led effort founded to accelerate the development and adoption of interoperability standards. Our goal is to build an open metaverse that enriches humanity and is home to a thriving, fair ecosystem with millions of creators,” said Marc Petit, Vice President of Unreal Engine ecosystem at Epic Games.
“IKEA is looking forward to this Metaverse Standards Forum as we believe that the way to democratise metaverse and spatial computing is to have many open standards that work well together. This forum we hope will be a place where that coordination could happen between SDO’s, industry, and where IKEA can contribute with the use cases and experiences from our industry,” said Martin Enthed, Innovation Manager of IKEA Marketing & Communication AB.
“NVIDIA understands the metaverse as an evolution of the Internet — from today’s 2D view of the web to an immersive 3D spatial overlay. For the metaverse to be successful and ubiquitous, it must be built on open standards, just like today’s 2D web — and our joining the Metaverse Standards Forum will help the community usher in a new era of collaborative and open 3D standards that will form the foundation of the metaverse,” said said Rev Lebaredian, Vice President of Omniverse & Simulation Technology at NVIDIA.
Photo: NVIDIA
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