Building A Future With Metaverse Standards Forum

The Metaverse Standards Forum

As the Metaverse continues to develop, it was agreed that some form of a foundation needs to be set in order to scratch the surface of the idealistic image that we have in our heads.

Launched on June 21st, 2022 the Metaverse Standards Forum was announced as a venue for coordination and collaboration between standards organizations and businesses. The idea was not to be another standards organization, but rather a discussion forum that anyone can access and join. SDO’s and industry leaders have agreed that the potential of the Metaverse will be best realized if it is built on a foundation of open standards.

The goal of the Forum is not to try to define and solve’ the whole Metaverse but rather to agree on which Metaverse-relevant interoperability problems can be solved. The Forum describes its work as ‘baking the open standard bricks’ for the Metaverse, not ‘trying to design the Metaverse cathedral.” The Metaverse will need a lot of different technologies that have not worked together to be able to come together in a cohesive way. In an effort to minimize the overlap in work throughout the sector, the group will collaboratively support the development and implementation of the technology through practical, project-based initiatives.

The activities will mostly be chosen by the needs and interests of its members and will cover major technology areas like 3D assets and rendering, AR & VR, user-generated content, avatars, identity management, privacy, and financial transactions. Some of these action-based projects will include hackathons, implementation prototyping, plugfests’, and open-source tooling. The hope is that after testing and collaboration, we will have deployment guidelines and implementation procedures so more businesses can begin their own journey into the Metaverse.

Hosted by the Khronos Group, the Forum membership is currently open to all organizations including companies, standards organizations, industry associations or universities at no charge. It has already brought together some of the world’s largest tech companies under one roof. With the first meeting being held as recently as mid-July the group is already home to over 1,200 organizations including but not limited to tech companies such as Meta, Microsoft, Adobe, OxSenses, Huawei, Sony Interactive Entertainment, and Qualcomm Technologies as well as standards organizations such as the World Wide Web Consortium, the Open Geospatial Consortium, the Open AR Cloud, the Spatial Web Foundation, and many more.

So, what does all this mean for you?

As it stands, the Metaverse is a ways away from where it needs to be in order to achieve mass adoption. If all difficulties in the Metaverse were to be handled uniquely, the Metaverse's progress and our experiences in it would be majorly set back. What the industry needs is the same degree of cooperation and teamwork that produced the internet to now focus on building out the Metaverse, and that is exactly what this group is set to do. By creating this Forum, the industry is addressing one of the Metaverse's biggest issues: a lack of interoperability and internet-like standards, together. Essentially, this group will help us achieve a far more seamless future Metaverse.

Although many organizations remain skeptical about what the Metaverse actually means and what technology's future will end up being, there is no question that someone's going to have to build it.