Launched in June 2022, the Metaverse Standards Forum has incorporated as an independent non-profit industry consortium.
With over 2,400 members, the Forum’s mission to enable, foster and promote cooperation and coordination over metaverse-related interoperability between standards, organisations, companies and universities remains unchanged. The Forum initially launched with 37 founding members and has now grown to include a diverse range of organisations.
Metaverse interoperability
Neil Trevett, president of the Khronos Group and initial president of the Metaverse Standards Forum commented, “Interoperability is the key to the metaverse scaling to its full potential beyond siloed games, experiences, and worlds, and the unprecedented level of participation in the Forum demonstrates strong industry interest in the broad cooperation necessary to bring that vision to life.
“The Forum does not itself develop standards but exists to help accelerate the mission of any industry initiative working for metaverse interoperability through fostering participation, building cooperative consensus and insights, and driving wider visibility for their efforts. We invite all interested organisations to participate in the now fully independent Forum.”
Since the Forum does not create standards, participation creates no patent licensing obligations. This allows all Members to participate in Forum Working Group meetings and Forum activities are non-confidential, with all deliverables being freely and publicly distributed.
First working group
Forum Working Groups operate under member-created charters that define pragmatic short-term projects that prioritise generating interoperability requirements and testing results to assist member organizations to accelerate their goals. The first Working Groups include:
- Metaverse Standards Register: building a public database mapping the landscape of metaverse-related standardization activities and open standards
- 3D Asset Interoperability: enabling alignment and cooperation between the USD and glTF 3D file formats
- Real/Virtual World Integration: examining and encouraging interoperability for use cases such as digital twins and visual positioning
- Asset Management: exploring the digital rights standards landscape for identity, ownership, protection, transport, exchange, and monetization of digital virtual assets.
As a newly independent non-profit organisation, the Metaverse Standards Forum’s membership structure will evolve over the coming months. New members may immediately join as Participants or Principal members. Current members will be offered continuing membership privileges for a transitional period.
Principal members play a key leadership role in the Forum, enjoy priority marketing and networking privileges, and may stand for election to the Forum Board of Directors. Principal membership dues have been tiered to enable and encourage participation by organisations of all types and sizes.
Membership in the Metaverse Standards Forum is open to all and you can become a member from the official page.
Isa Muhammad is a writer and video game journalist covering many aspects of entertainment media including the film industry. He's steadily writing his way to the sharp end of journalism and enjoys staying informed. If he's not reading, playing video games or catching up on his favourite TV series, then he's probably writing about them.
