A group of companies, including some of the most important names in technology and the Internet, have teamed up to develop the interoperability standards needed to achieve an open metavers. The organization is called the Metaverse Standards Forum, and its founding members include Meta, Microsoft, Huawei, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Epic Games, Unity, and Adobe. As Reuters points out, one company that is not well known in the list is Apple. There have been several reports in recent years that Apple is launching its own virtual or augmented reality headphones, and is expected to become a major player in the metavers when the device is available.
Another important name missing from the list is Google, which is also working on an AR headset codenamed Project Iris. Niantic, the developer of Pokémon Go, and Roblox are not on the membership list either. That said, subscription is free and open to any organization, so more companies could join later. As with any standard, one for the metavers would only be considered a success if companies, especially the most important players in the industry, adopt them. “Several industry leaders have stated that the potential of metavers will be better if it is built on the basis of open standards,” the forum said in a press release.
The group also said it will focus on “pragmatic, action-based projects.” These include hacking and working on open source tools designed to speed up the testing and adoption of metavers standards. And while companies can join at any time, members are expected to begin meeting at the forum this July.
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