Tech giants band together to form metaverse standards forum

Meta, Huawei, and Microsoft have partnered with tech giants to launch a joint Metaverse Standards Forum aimed to set out industry guidelines to ensure immersive VR worlds are compatible.

The companies will analyse how the coordination and implementation of interoperability standards could support an open and inclusive metaverse.

The forum plans to focus on projects such as implementation prototyping, hackathons, and more that will accelerate the testing and adoption of metaverse standards, while also developing consistent terminology and deployment guidelines.

It is hosted by software company Khronos Group, alongside Sony, Adobe, IKEA, Qualcomm, and standards groups including the World Wide Web Consortium.

Notably, Apple has not joined the forum, even though it is rumoured that the company is working on its own mixed-reality headset, suggesting it may be in competition with Meta Platforms in the metaverse.

The Metaverse Standards Forum is open to all companies, standards groups, and universities who are able to join free of charge, and meetings are expected to start in July of this year.

Vishal Shah, vice president of Metaverse at Meta, said that “building a metaverse for everyone will require an industry-wide focus on common standards”. Adding, “The Metaverse Standards Forum can drive the collaboration that’s needed to make this possible, and Meta is committed to this work.”

Khronos president, Neil Trevett, said: “The Metaverse Standards Forum is a unique venue for coordination between standards organisation and industry, with a mission to foster the pragmatic and timely standardisation that will be essential to an open and inclusive metaverse.”