4 myths are blocking real, needed VR standards
Summary By Phil Lelyveld
Neil Trevett, the president of The Khronos Group, and Yuval Boger, CEO of Sensics, list four “myths” that stand in the way of VR standards and more rapid market growth. Their rebuttal to #1 ‘It is too early for standards’ is to point to the number of companies that have signed up to work on The Khronos Group’s Open XR Working Group’s standards effort. They counter #2 ‘standards stifle innovation’ by noting that many innovative companies can only afford to develop for a few non-interoperable platforms, so the lack of standards is also stifling innovation. Myth #3, ‘consumers won’t be impacted,’ they argue is not true because the lack of standards makes consumers hesitant to buy a product that may not work universally with all VR experiences. Finally, they discount the argument that there are too many groups developing VR standards by point to two group’s, The Khronos Ground and the IEEE, as the two organizations leading the effort. The ETC’s VR/AR Initiative program lead, Phil Lelyveld, says that despite outreach efforts to the creative community by those organizations, their active contributors are predominantly hardware and tool developers and technologists. Members of the Hollywood creative community often make the argument that they want to shape the future of entertainment experiences rather than have their creative options bounded by the product development choices of hardware and software developers. It may be too early to codify standards, says Phil, but it is not too early for creatives to get involved in the discussions.
Phil added that he’s never heard anyone make the argument that consumers won’t be impacted (#3) before, he believes that innovation is redirected rather than stifled (#2), and there are other standardization efforts involving significant players (#4).
See the original story here: https://venturebeat.com/2017/08/25/4-myths-getting-in-the-way-of-necessary-vr-standardization/