Last year, Pixar, Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, and NVIDIA announced the Alliance for OpenUSD, an organization to advance and proliferate the USD file format as the future standard for creating and distributing 3D content. The standard, which is a framework for constructing and packaging complex 3D scenes, was called the “HTML of the metaverse” by NVIDIA, and expected to “help accelerate the next generation of AR experiences,” by Apple.

Now two more heavyweights, Microsoft and Sony, have joined the Alliance for OpenUSD in support of Universal Scene Description (USD) as the future of authoring and packaging complex 3D content. The idea is to have a single file format that contains geometry, lighting, animations and more—which can be portably used between 3D authoring tools like Maya, 3ds Max, Houdini, Substance Painter, and collaborative workflows.

In addition to Apple, Microsoft and Sony join other members of the group with significant ties to the XR industry, like Meta and Epic Games.

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For Apple’s part, the company sees USD as an important building stone for the XR space.

“OpenUSD will help accelerate the next generation of AR experiences, from artistic creation to content delivery, and produce an ever-widening array of spatial computing applications,” said Apple’s VP of the Vision Products Group at the time the Alliance for OpenUSD was announced. “Apple has been an active contributor to the development of USD, and it is an essential technology for the groundbreaking visionOS platform, as well as the new Reality Composer Pro developer tool. We look forward to fostering its growth into a broadly adopted standard.”

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."

  • All the major players are onboard, it seems that the USD format is going to be the new standard for 3D elements in immersive environment

    • ViRGiN

      They tried with GLTF and it was horrible.

      • What's horrible about GLTF?

        • ViRGiN

          What’s to like about it, other than theoretical value? They dropped it with lacking documentation, and tools were lacking for proper authoring.

    • If you know anyway to use USD at runtime on Android then let me know. Until then it's a pipe-dream for XR dev.

      • Andrew Jakobs

        If someone is writing a player the there is no problem, and for devs it might make multiplatform/engine development much easier. Much easier to switch engines etc.

    • Arno van Wingerde

      I did not get that from this article; the way i read it, it seems Meta does not seem to be a member….

  • Adrian Meredith

    That's nice and all but usd is not designed to be used for distribution. The file format is massively complex

    • Andrew Jakobs

      How does it matter if the format is complex? If 3D software is supporting it and engines like Unity and Unreal support it natively, the there is no problem with the format being complex.