The Metaverse Standards Forum is now incorporated as an independent non-profit industry consortium.
The Forum’s mission continues unchanged—to enable, foster and promote cooperation and coordination over metaverse-related interoperability between standards organisations, companies, and universities.
The Forum was launched in June 2022 and driven by the Khronos Group. Today, with over 2,400 members and multiple active Working and Exploratory Groups focused on driving pragmatic interoperability advances, the Metaverse Standards Forum has organised its own governance, finances, and operations. Working Group activities remain freely accessible to any member, while new paid membership tiers enable members to be elected to leadership roles in the Forum while funding Forum projects.
“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,” said Neil Trevett, president of the Khronos Group and initial president of the Metaverse Standards Forum. “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.”
The Metaverse Standards Forum launched with 37 founding members and has grown to include a diverse range of standards organisations and companies, industry consortia, platform vendors, hardware manufacturers, and end-user organisations. The Forum maintains a pipeline of member-driven Exploratory and Working Groups to address metaverse interoperability challenges and opportunities across multiple domains that have been prioritised by the Forum membership. As the Forum does not create standards, participation creates no patent licensing obligations. All Members are enabled to participate in Forum Working Group meetings and Forum activities are non-confidential, with all deliverables being freely and publicly distributed.
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 accelerate their goals. The first Working Groups include: Metaverse Standards Register building a public database mapping the landscape of metaverse-related standardisation 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 systems, and Asset Management exploring the digital rights standards landscape for identity, ownership, protection, transport, exchange, and monetisation of digital virtual assets.
In addition, multiple Forum Exploratory Groups are building consensus on charters for upcoming Working Groups, including: 3D web interoperability, interoperable avatars and characters, digital fashion and wearables, metaverse network requirements, end-user troubleshooting, and metaverse privacy, cybersecurity, and identity. Any Forum member may propose, participate in, or stand for election to lead a domain Working Group.
Now is the time to get involved! All companies, standards organizations, industry associations, and universities with an interest in the metaverse are invited to join the Forum and engage in these open discussions and projects. Members are encouraged to join, suggest, and lead Forum activities that further their business or mission.
