Context:
Recently, various brands gathered for the founding of the Metaverse Standards Forum for the development of interoperability standards to drive the growth of the metaverse.
Relevance:
GS III- Science and technology
Dimensions of the Article:
- What is Metaverse?
- What is the Metaverse Standards Forum?
- What is the Need of Interoperability of Metaverse?
What is Metaverse?
- It is a network of always-on virtual environments in which many people can interact with one another and digital objects through virtual representations of themselves.
- The term may also refer to digital spaces which are made more lifelike by the use of virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR).
- There is also a specific type of metaverse which uses blockchain technology. In these, users can buy virtual land and other digital assets using cryptocurrencies.
What are the key aspects of a Metaverse?
There are three key aspects of a metaverse:
- Presence is the feeling of actually being in a virtual space, with virtual others. This sense of presence is achieved through virtual reality (VR) technologies such as head-mounted displays. It improves the quality of online interactions.
- Interoperability means being able to seamlessly travel between virtual spaces with the same virtual assets. That is, one virtual representation created, can be used in different virtual worlds.
- Standardization– These are common technological standards that are essential for widespread adoption. This enables interoperability of platforms and services across the metaverse.
What is the Metaverse Standards Forum?
- The concept of the metaverse has yet to be fully established, but interest in virtual and augmented realities fast-tracks the growth of various metaverse projects.
- In light of the growing anticipation for the metaverse, Metaverse Standards Forum was established “to foster the development of open standards for the metaverse”.
- “Open Standards” are standards made available to the general public and are developed (or approved) and maintained via a collaborative and consensus driven process. “Open Standards” facilitate interoperability and data exchange among different products or services and are intended for widespread adoption.
- The internet is interoperable through the power of HTML, the metaverse also requires a similar interface for users to navigate between virtual worlds freely.
Objectives:
- It aims to analyze the interoperability necessary for running the metaverse.
- Interoperability is the driving force for the growth and adoption of the open metaverse.
- It will focus on pragmatic, action-based projects such as implementation prototyping, hackathons, plugfests, and open-source tooling to accelerate the testing and adoption of metaverse standards.
- It will also develop consistent language and deployment guidelines to expand the online universe.
What is the Need of Interoperability of Metaverse?
- Interoperability equips the metaverse with support for the different features and activities across projects.
- This continuity is essential in generating a fluid user experience from one metaverse project to another.
- With open interoperability standards and guidelines to follow, companies can launch fully interoperable projects, allowing them to integrate their programming interfaces with other projects.
- There has to be a set of commonly agreed upon protocols to make the metaverse work, just like how Transfer Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) enabled the Internet to go live four decades ago.
- Such protocols help us in connecting to a WiFi network from home and office without changing our devices.
- They are a result of open standards. The potential of the metaverse will be best realised only if it is built on open standards.
- Proponents of the metaverse call it the future of the Internet with 3D at its core. And to fully simulate the digital world, 3D interoperability has to be met.
-Source: The Hindu
