Tech giants joined forces to form the “Metaverse Standards Forum,” to create the interoperability standards required for an open metaverse.
The organization’s founding members are Sony Interactive Entertainment, Microsoft, Huawei, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Epic Games, Unity, and Adobe.
Meta has been quick to emphasize that no one company will “own” the metaverse space and be able to dictate what can happen in these new virtual worlds.
According to Neil Trevett, NVIDIA executive who chairs the forum, any organization is welcome to join the forum, including members from the cryptocurrency industry.
Reuters, however, notes the ‘conspicuous’ absence of Apple, reportedly launching its own virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR) headset.
The said device is anticipated to make Apple a direct competitor of Meta in building an interconnected virtual worlds reality.
Meta previously revealed its plans to release a mixed-reality headset with the codename “Cambria” this year.
In the past, Apple has contributed significantly to developing web standards like HTML5.
Apple collaborated with Pixar on the “USDZ” file format and with Adobe to ensure it was supported for three-dimensional media in the metaverse, per Reuters.
Google, also purportedly working on an AR headset under the working name “Project Iris,” is another big company missing from the list.
Additionally absent from the group are Roblox and Niantic, the creators of Pokémon Go.
The group said it would concentrate on “pragmatic, action-based projects,” such as hosting hackathons and developing open-source tools to hasten the testing and implementation of metaverse standards.
It said in its press release, “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.”
The forum will begin holding sessions in July, but new members can join at any time.
Metaverse generally refers to shared virtual world environments which people can access via the internet. It can also refer to digital spaces, which are made more lifelike through VR or AR.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg refers to the metaverse as the “future of the internet.”
Read here: A New World: What is “The Metaverse”, and what does it mean for us? (commsroom.co)
Jaw de Guzman is the content producer for Comms Room, a knowledge platform and website aimed at assisting the communications industry and its professionals.
