Companies like Meta, Microsoft, Adobe, Alibaba, and 0xSenses joined hands in the creation of the Metaverse Standards Forum – an independent project aiming to foster the development of open standards for the metaverse. The Forum will focus on “action-based” projects like “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”.
Companies can join for free. Currently, the founding member 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 (XRA).
“Building a metaverse for everyone will require an industry-wide focus on common standards. The Metaverse Standards Forum can drive the collaboration that’s needed to make this possible, and Meta is committed to this work. Creators, developers and companies will all benefit from the technologies and experiences that will be made possible by common protocols,” said Vishal Shah, Vice President of Metaverse at Meta.
“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.”
“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.”
“IKEA is looking forward to this Metaverse Standards Forum as we believe that the way to democratize metaverse and spatial computing is to have many open standards that work well together,” says Martin Enthed, Innovation Manager at IKEA Marketing & Communication AB. “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.”
What would be the first initiatives of the Metaverse Standards Forum and whether new companies would join it in the quest for openness and collaboration in the metaverse space is yet to be revealed.
