The Makers of the Metaverse:
Masterpiece Studio and the voices guiding virtual reality’s future
If you could design the future, how would you do it?
At Masterpiece Studio, we ask ourselves that question every day. You may have heard about the limitless potential of the metaverse, but it’s our job to transform that potential into an open and inclusive virtual reality.
And we’re not alone — ultimately, we’re one of many companies building the parts that will power the metaverse. With so much energy behind the effort, progress is fast… and, there are challenges.
So, collectively, where do we start? With standards. As stated by the World Economic Forum (WEF), interoperable virtual environments will be a defining feature of the metaverse. Why? Because, like the real world, the metaverse will require users to share resources and interact in a unified manner.
However, instead of a handful of companies amassing unprecedented power, interoperability standards will work to lower switching costs for tech users, offer less protection for incumbents, and foster more innovation across the board. It’s a difficult and imperative goal, which is why the topic of governance and standards is being raised around the world — even with the WEF at Davos.
For many of the companies breaking new virtual ground, building the world of tomorrow begins with the Metaverse Standards Forum. Masterpiece Studio is proud to have joined forces with other industry leaders to influence how the future will look and feel.
It’s no small task, but we’re ready for it. In the words of our CEO, Jon Gagne, “Masterpiece Studio is on a mission to enable a billion people to be able to easily create and edit 3D content.”
“We will need everybody to contribute to the digital world for the metaverse to come to fruition. To work with us means building something that has meaning; we’re focused on changing how the world works.”
Keep reading for a recap of Masterpiece Studio’s next move towards the metaverse.
What is the Metaverse Standards Forum?
As Masterpiece Studio builds software to democratize 3D creation, we want to see it deployed in a metaverse that is equally inclusive. It’s our goal to create an accessible virtual environment where a billion people from across the globe can live, work, play, connect, and thrive.
That’s why we’re excited about creating a foundation of open standards. As a member of the Metaverse Standards Forum, we can cooperate with standards organizations and other key industry players to foster the development of an open and inclusive metaverse.
“We’re on a mission to enable a billion people to be able to easily create 3D content. This scale of creators is an absolute requirement for realizing the vision and potential of the metaverse.” -Jon Gagne, CEO of Masterpiece Studio
Together with over 1,200 organizations, Masterpiece Studio is “baking the open standard bricks” for the metaverse by selecting industry-wide terminology, recommending standards usage and guidelines, working on interoperability prototypes and tooling projects, and more.
Why are standards important to the metaverse?
When the world gained access to the internet, everything changed. We’re on the cusp of another huge breakthrough with the metaverse — and with massive change comes chaos. Fortunately, Masterpiece Studio and our peers are bringing order to this new era via the Metaverse Standards Forum.
How will we do this? By creating standardized access to proven technologies. As we abandon smartphones for more total immersion with technology, we must be mindful of how we reshape everything humans do, from business to socializing to travelling and more.
“The metaverse will bring together diverse technologies, requiring a constellation of interoperability standards, created and maintained by many standards organizations.” -Neil Trevett, president of Khronos
The metaverse will be a product of diverse technologies interoperating as one — so as the connectivity of the web meets the immersive quality of spatial computing, we’re creating space for standardized access to proven technologies in the metaverse stack. This will promote market opportunities by removing market friction and help to ensure that the metaverse is open and accessible to all.
Who are the key players involved in this?
As a Principal Member of the Metaverse Standards Forum, Masterpiece Studio is part of a vibrant community of over a thousand standards organizations and companies working to build an open metaverse — including Meta, Google, Unity, and more.
We’re also engaging with the Founding Members of the forum: Avataar, Autodesk, DAMO Academy, Adobe, Academy Software Foundation, 0xSenses — and lead founder Khronos Group, a “member-funded consortium focused on the creation of royalty-free open standards for 3D graphics, Virtual and Augmented Reality, Parallel Computing, Machine Learning, and Vision Processing on a wide variety of platforms and devices.”
Is that all?
No! Masterpiece has also become a member of the Khronos Group. While the Metaverse Standards Forum brings technical leaders together to make recommendations on standards, the Khronos Group (and Masterpiece Studio, as part of it) will actually create those standards.
In fact, many of the standards created by Khronos working groups are widely used in the industry today, such as Vulkan, OpenXR, glTF, OpenGL, OpenGL ES, WebGL, OpenCL, OpenVX, SYCL, SPIR, and more. As new standards of future technologies are established, Masterpiece Studio is taking a seat at the table to bring them to life and optimize the potential of the metaverse.
So, what’s next?
Alongside industry groundbreakers, Masterpiece Studio will be focused on pragmatic, actionable short-term opportunities to enhance metaverse interoperability.
For our part, we’ll continue our work in several key areas, including the creation of innovative 3D creation tools, user-created content, resources, expertise, and use cases. And, we’ll be active in the Khronos working groups focused on glTF and 3D Commerce, participating in the development of specifications and Conformance Test Suites.
We can’t wait to realize the potential of the metaverse and build market opportunities for all — so make sure to follow us to stay in the loop on the big things to come.
“With so much innovation happening so quickly, this cooperative approach to developing and aligning on open standards will help everyone in the space move further, faster.” -Jon Gagne, CEO of Masterpiece Studio
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