Industry comes together to form The Metaverse Standards Forum

The Metaverse Standards Forum has been formed for industry-wide cooperation on interoperability standards needed to build the open metaverse. The forum brings together companies and standards organisations to foster alignment on requirements and priorities for metaverse interoperability standards, and accelerate their development and deployment through pragmatic, action-based projects.

The Forum will explore where the lack of interoperability is holding back metaverse deployment and how the work of Standards Developing Organizations (SDOs) defining and evolving needed standards may be coordinated and accelerated. Open to any organization at no cost, 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.

Open to any organisation at no cost, 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, John 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, multi-user gaming, and more – at new levels of scale and immersiveness.

Multiple industry leaders have stated that the potential of the metaverse will be best realized if it is built on a foundation of open standards. Building an open and inclusive metaverse at pervasive scale will demand a constellation of open interoperability standards created by SDOs such as The Khronos Group, the World Wide Web Consortium, the Open Geospatial Consortium, the Open AR Cloud, the Spatial Web Foundation, and many others. The Metaverse Standards Forum aims to foster consensus-based cooperation between diverse SDOs and companies to define and align requirements and priorities for metaverse standards—accelerating their availability and reducing duplication of effort across the industry. 

“The metaverse will bring together diverse technologies, requiring a constellation of interoperability standards, created and maintained by many standards organizations,” said Neil Trevett, Khronos president. “The Metaverse Standards Forum is a unique venue for coordination between standards organizations and industry, with a mission to foster the pragmatic and timely standardization that will be essential to an open and inclusive metaverse.”

Hosted by the Khronos Group, the Forum is open to any company, standards organization, or university at no charge through a simple click-through Participant Agreement. Companies that wish to provide Forum oversight, and may wish to fund Forum projects, can choose to become a Principal member.

The activities of the Forum 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. Forum meetings are expected to start in July 2022. More information on joining can be found at metaverse-standards.org.
“Technology and standards are the bricks and cement of the metaverse,” said Qi Wang, assistant president and head of healthcare and cognitive psychology lab at 0xSenses. “Safe, reliable, and ethical interoperability is especially important as humans become part of the metaverse. 0xSenses is thrilled to join the Metaverse Standards Forum as a founding principal to help make the metaverse dreams come true faster and better.” 

“The Academy Software Foundation is pleased to join the Metaverse Standard Forum as a Founding member, because open source software developed by motion picture industry engineers can contribute building blocks for the Metaverse,” said David Morin, executive director of Academy Software Foundation (ASWF). When it comes to building strange new worlds and boldly go where no one has gone before, count us in.”
“Adobe is excited to join the Metaverse Standards Forum,” said Stefano Corazza, vice president and fellow of AR at Adobe. “It is in our history to contribute to the industry by defining foundational standards for digital experiences, as we did with PDF and DNG. Establishing standards is essential to foster collaboration in the Metaverse, and to allow this new ecosystem to truly flourish.”

“Alibaba is pleased to join The Metaverse Standards Forum which encourages collaboration on interoperability standards of the open metaverse,” said Dr Tan Ping, head of XR Lab, Alibaba DAMO Academy. “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.”

“We are thrilled to be a founding member of the Metaverse Standards Forum as it fosters open standards and collaboration that will unlock the full potential of metaverse experiences,” said Eric Bourque, vice president of Engineering, Media & Entertainment, Autodesk. “The future of design and make is the industrial metaverse where designers, builders, manufacturers and content creators can make better, more informed decisions quickly.”

“Avataar is extremely excited and proud to be taking part in The Metaverse Standards forum to bring about interoperability standards across metaverse ecosystems,” said Sravanth Aluru, CEO & founder of Avataar. “We believe there is a need for technical products to solve the challenges we face in making the end user experience seamless & scalable and our deep-tech platform is on that path. We look forward to collaborating with the esteemed partners in the forum to build these standards.”

“The metaverse will ultimately encompass all our activities and support them with applications. Just like standardization has been an important foundation for open knowledge sharing and rapid development in the Web age, the same is true for the Metaverse. Blackshark is pleased to contribute to this success by participating in the Metaverse Standards Forum,” said Blackshark.ai CTO Arno Hollosi.

“The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is joining the Metaverse Standards Forum to accelerate the coordination with other standards organizations and metaverse stakeholders in building an interoperable platform for the metaverse, in which W3C’s Immersive Web vision is set to play a critical role,” said Dominique Hazaël-Massieux, W3C immersive web strategist.

“XR Association is pleased to be part of this prestigious collaborative effort to design the XR standards framework,” said Stephanie Montgomery, vice president of Research and Best Practices at XRA. “Our mission is the responsible development and advancement of XR. Through the Metaverse Standards Forum we will contribute to common protocols, interoperability and shared understanding, thereby responsibly improving technological efficiencies and advancing XR technology to new levels of delight.”