Khronos Group, the consortium behind the OpenXR standard, is helping to assemble other XR industry players in service of cooperatively building interoperability standards for what it hopes will be an “open and inclusive metaverse.”

The so-called Metaverse Standards Forum was founded by platform holders, hardware companies, engine/tool creators, and users, with participants including companies such as Adobe, Autodesk, Epic Games, Unity, Meta, Microsoft, nVidia, OTOY, Qualcomm, and Sony.

Its founders says the Forum, which will hold its first meeting in July, will focus on “practical, actionable interoperability projects that can ‘move the needle’ on aspects of the metaverse that are needed by broad consensus.”

Image courtesy Metaverse Standards Forum

“We are ‘baking the open standard bricks’ for the metaverse, not ‘building the cathedral’,” the group says.

Forum organizers say the group will “coordinate requirements and support for existing SDOs developing standards relevant to the metaverse,” with the Khronos Group acting as host.

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The Khronos Group is known for backing and organizing a number of open standards including OpenXR, an open standard developed to make XR applications run across many different XR headsets without developers needing to build different versions of their applications for each headset.

Organizers say the industry-wide forum will be open to all interested parties, as it includes no participation fee, no non-disclosure agreements (NDA), and no IP framework. Check out the project’s website to learn more about how you can join.

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • psuedonymous

    Notably absent – though not to anyone’s great surprise – is Valve.

    • XRC

      Metawhatsit already poo poo’d by Valve leadership during PC gamer interview:

      “There’s a bunch of get rich quick schemes around metaverse.”

      “Most of the people who are talking about metaverse have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about.”

      They’re like, ‘Oh, you’ll have this customizable avatar.’ And it’s like, well… go into La Noscea in Final Fantasy 14 and tell me that this isn’t a solved problem from a decade ago, not some fabulous thing that you’re, you know, inventing.”

      • Elite-Force Cinema

        Then what do you want metaverse to do in order for them to not suck, you clown? For them to do better at treating their customers with respect or for them to die as a thing, like, right now, FOR FUCKING EVER, so that what, you can make fun of their deaths by posting memes out of their deaths just like Jacksepticeye’s dad?

        • XRC

          Thanks for your childish insult, great way to engage.

          Metaverse doesn’t need “to do” anything, it’s being hyped up by a group of companies seeking funding during the new technology investment bubble, despite the technology being years away.

          • Elite-Force Cinema

            No! Not for them to not need to do anything! For you to force them to die as a thing, like, right now, FOR FUCKING EVER, so that way, you can make fun of their deaths by posting memes out of their deaths just like Jacksepticeye’s dad!!!!!

          • Elite-Force Cinema

            I said no! Not for them to not need to do anything! For you to force them to die as a thing, like, right now, FOR FUCKING EVER, so that way, you can make fun of their deaths by posting memes out of their deaths just like Jacksepticeye’s dad and TechnoBlade!!!!!

      • kontis

        While GabeN is a game industry’s super hero who revolutionized and saved PC gaming TWICE and gave indies incredible opportunities let’s not be tribalistic about it.

        Gaben is very good at his business because he not only maximize value provided to customers, but also because he is obsessive at optimizing his advantage against competitors (which with open market is directly corelated to the first part, making it usually very positive for us).

        However there are some “side effects” of this approach that are not good for the industry. He bragged about making more profit per employee than Apple and Google. He created steamworks features as a Steam-exclusive technology to provide tools, but also a lock-in for indie devs on Steam – creating a big disincentive to release your game on another store.

        He banned use of blockchain in games on Steam not because of some worries or care, but because it would make Steam Market useless (likw reselling the CSGO boxes), it would leak value outside of Steam and he wouldn’t get 30% anymore. They don’t need “metaverse”, ebcause they already have their internal market, which is like a country with 100% locked economy inside and banned import and export – very nice for the ruling party…

        The crucial part here is many ideas of metaverse put the digital gatekeeper at degraded position compared to web 2.0 era of a few big ecosystems with internal monopolies.

        The 3 most successful corporations in the world in profiting from 3rd party real-time 3D content that have the most to lose if some kind fo metaverse protocols are established are: Apple, Google, Valve.
        Now look if any of those is on the list.

        The 3 biggest corporations that are troubled by lack of gatekeeper capabilities (or who failed miserably trying to achieve it): Microsoft (mobile failure), Epic Games (don’t want to give 30% to Apple), Meta (Apple ruined their business).
        They are of course on the list.

        Tl;dr; this is all about profits. Nothing bad and in that. It’s how market works. Just don’t be too naïve.

        • XRC

          This certainly is about profit, either protecting existing market or generating venture capital investment hype; Metaverse like VR hype in 2012-2014.

          The big problem with Metaverse VC hype is downside when reality hits hype, hard to attract future funding for legitimate business when investors burned Metaverse cash?

        • This is probably one of the the single best explanations that I have seen, that depicts why and how the Metaverse as a for-profit enterprise, with much-ado-about-competition involved.

          I like this summary. Thanks!

        • guest

          Does that mean they’re not changing their name from Valve to Verse???

        • Dave

          I don’t know about this. To me it’s pure arrogance from the big players that’s all. A consortium first and foremost is to do with standards and obviously a company like Apple isn’t going to let somebody else write there own rules. Apple, Google and Valve will be planning there own profit making steps into the metaverse, but without established standards they will be dropped and will eventually have to surrender to the open standards approach.

      • Trekkie

        I think Gabe was referring to the Web3 Metaverse BS which consists of NFT scams, rug pulls and shady “pseudonymous” crooks. Not the Metaverss the others are talking about or the Blockchain itself which is a solid piece of tech.

    • Shuozhe Nan

      But they got Ikea!

    • Jonathan Winters III

      And Nintendo.

    • Adrian Meredith

      Why would valve be on there? They aren’t building a metaverse

  • kontis

    The elephant in the room here: some of these companies talk about completely different things when they explain their visions of Metaverse. Not surprising, because it has become a buzzword that doesn’t mean much.

    But it’s quite funny, when you realize that for Meta it’s “remote social and work by wearing HMDs on our heads” and for Epic it’s “Roblox and Fortnite on phones, TVs and PCs”. This may result in some very divergent priorities…

    (BTW, for Carmack it’s Minecraft because he likes Minecraft, for Gaben it’s FFXIV because he likes FFXIV and for me it’s VRChat+FBT, because it’s the only mass social XR thing that really made me think that I was seeing the future).

    • gothicvillas

      Metaverse gotta be VR. Phone app or any other pancake version is just dumb, its a poor man’s metaverse.

  • RapSucks

    Metaverse is gay

  • Well, let’s hope they’ll produce something good like OpenXR…

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  • kevink-1

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    The token will allow traders to participate in the platform’s governance protocol, as well as profit from the marketplace’s success through community ownership.
    Blur said in a tweet that traders have 60 days to claim their airdropped BLUR tokens, which are trading at roughly 50 cents at press time, according to CoinGecko.
    “Since launching [four] months ago, 146,823 users have traded $1.2 billion dollars [sic] worth of NFTs on Blur (wash trading excluded),” Blur said in a tweet. “This growth is breathtaking and was only possible with the support of the Blur community.”
    According to data from DappRadar, Blur’s 24-hour trading volume stands at about $9.5 million, second only to leading marketplace OpenSea, whose trading volume is around $12 million.
    NFT traders have been awaiting the BLUR token’s release since the platform went live. Originally set to release in January, Blur has been airdropping its token since October through “care packages” to collectors who have traded an Ethereum-based NFT in the past six months. On Tuesday, Blur delayed their token-launch by 90 minutes, warning collectors to be aware of potential phishing attempts and scam links.
    Blur launched in October with a strategy to cater to professional NFT traders with a zero-fee marketplace. In its first 24 hours, it conducted $2.5 million in trading volume, creeping up on OpenSea’s trading volume. While the royalty-optional marketplace has added fuel to the fire to the ongoing debate among creators and marketplaces, it has continued to trail behind OpenSea’s trading volume numbers.
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