The Metaverse Standards Forum began its goal of fostering and coordinating metaverse-related interoperability. In less than a year, it has developed from incubation to incorporation as an independent non-profit industry consortium.

The Metaverse Standards Forum, which underwent incubation for nine months under the Khronos Group, is now grown up, reaching official standing as an independent non-profit industry consortium. The forum was formed in mid-2022 with 37 founding members; today, it has more than 2,400 members that comprise a diverse group of standards organizations and companies, industry consortia, platform vendors, hardware manufacturers, and end-user organizations.

While its status may have changed, the forum’s mission remains the same: to enable, foster, and promote cooperation and coordination over metaverse-related interoperability between standards organizations, companies, and universities. 

“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,” says Neil Trevett, president of the Khronos Group and initial president of the Metaverse Standards Forum. “The forum 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.”

The forum’s multiple active Working and Exploratory Groups, driven by its members, address metaverse interoperability challenges and opportunities across multiple domains that have been prioritized by the forum membership. With this change in status, the forum is able to make decisions concerning a sustainable metaverse future. It does not, however, create standards.

The Metaverse Standards Forum Working Groups operate under member-created charters that define pragmatic short-term projects that prioritize generating interoperability requirements and testing results to help member organizations accelerate their goals.

The forum’s first Working Groups include:

• Metaverse Standards Register—To build a public database mapping the landscape of metaverse-related standardization activities and open standards.
• 3D Asset Interoperability—To enable alignment and cooperation between the USD and glTF 3D file formats.
• Real/Virtual World Integration—To examine and encourage interoperability for use cases such as digital twins and visual positioning.
• Asset Management—To explore the digital rights standards landscape for identity, ownership, protection, transport, exchange, and monetization of digital virtual assets.

In addition, multiple 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.

The Metaverse Standards Forum’s membership structure will evolve over the coming months. New members may immediately join the organization as Participant or Principal members. Current members will be offered continuing membership privileges for a transitional period.

Membership in the Metaverse Standards Forum is open to all.