Adobe and Sony Join Group Developing Standards for the Metaverse
Some of the biggest names in technology have banded together to form the Metaverse Standards Forum to create open and consistent standards for interoperability in an open metaverse.
The Metaverse Standards Forum’s founding members include several tech heavy-hitters including Microsoft, Huawei, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Epic Games, Unity, Adobe, and — perhaps obviously — Meta, but there are some other companies on the list that are perhaps less expected, like IKEA and Wayfair.
The Metaverse Standards Forum says it brings together leading standards organizations and companies for industry-wide cooperation on interoperability standards needed to build the open metaverse.
“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,” the group says.
The Forum says that the group will create standards around a host of technologies that fall under the idea of the metaverse, including 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.
“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,” the Forum says.
Endgadget notes there are a few companies conspicuously absent from the member list: Apple, Google, Niantic, and Roblox. Apple and Google have been rumored to be developing augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) hardware and are expected to release products in the next couple of years, which makes their absence particularly notable. Niantic is the developer behind the popular AR-equipped mobile game Pokemon Go, while Roblox is an online game creation system that allows users to play games created by other players.
The metaverse, a term popularized by Mark Zuckerberg as the future of what was once Facebook, has yet to prove itself as a popular idea. Meta has lost billions of dollars developing products for its vision of a digital future — an investment that has yet to bear fruit.
Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.
