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Metaverse

(A.) Policy and legislation

(A.1) Policy objectives

Metaverses are immersive and virtual worlds where people can interact in real time in a seamless blending of the digital and physical world. It is widely accepted that metaverses have three core aspects – persistence & real-time operation, immersive user experience and a generalised economic system – opening new opportunities across different societal sectors such as education & learning, leisure & entertainment, design & manufacturing, health or cultural heritage. Moreover, an increasing number of citizens will be making use of the metaverse as more immersive and engaging content and applications will be on offer. Virtual worlds will also empower citizens to be more involved in democratic life.

Developing and deploying metaverses will require a coordinated integration of digital technologies such as low latency and high throughput networks (e.g. 5G/6G, WIFI 6/7), flexible and high performant computing and storage systems (e.g. HPC or cloud-edge), VR/AR, data & AI, blockchain/NFT and cybersecurity, to name just a few.

In its work programme 2023, the European Commission announced a non-legislative initiative for the second quarter of 2023 aiming to “propose tools on developing open human-centric virtual worlds, such as metaverses. These provide a myriad of possibilities for industries and service sectors, the creative arts and citizens, as well as opportunities to address broader social challenges such as health and smart cities” and also to the “next year’s initiatives on food waste, learning mobility and virtual worlds” building on the success of the Conference on the Future of Europe.  

The EU wants to shape the metaverses according to European values, principles, rules and strategic interests, from the outset: trustful, secure, respecting EU legislation. Fostering metaverses that focus on business opportunities as well as societal challenges and that reflect the public good dimension of the analogue world. These metaverses will be supported by cutting edge technological developments as well as an underpinning ambitious, resilient, performant and secure connectivity infrastructure.

(A.2) EC perspective and progress report

The vision of the European Commission[31],[32] is one of a trustworthy, secure and interoperable metaverse, based on widely accepted standards and ensuring that European data is used for the good of EU citizens and companies. This vision is based on three main axes; centred on people and the European values and rules, mastering the technologies that shape the metaverse, and providing a resilient connectivity infrastructure.

First, these virtual environments must embed European values and rules from the outset. People should feel as safe in the virtual worlds as they do in the real one. They should be developed based on interoperable standards and no single private player should hold the key to the metaverse or set its terms and conditions. Innovators and technologies should be allowed to thrive unhindered.

Second, Europe should master all building blocks of the metaverse, in particular virtual and augmented reality which are the key technologies that allow rich immersive experiences, but also breakthrough technologies in fields such as photonics, semiconductors or new materials that can be the quantum leap to a world that truly blends the real with the virtual. This will require an ecosystem approach to ensure all parts of the value chain are represented.

Third, when virtual worlds become mainstream, the amount of data being exchanged and harvested will be of greater magnitude than ever. The metaverses will put under even more intense pressure the connectivity infrastructure. Therefore, the Commission will launch a comprehensive reflection and consultation on the vision and business model of the infrastructure needed for the metaverse.

Standardisation will play a central role in the pursuit of these objectives, and the EC will engage with industry and SDOs to have standards in place than ensure the openness and interoperability of all layers of the metaverse.

Through Horizon and Digital Europe programmes, the Commission will continue supporting metaverse related R&I and deployment. In addition, the recently launched Virtual and Augmented Reality Industrial Coalition will soon develop a Strategic Technology Roadmap addressing both industrial and societal challenges.

(A.3) References

(B.) Requested actions

Action 1: EC to launch a comprehensive consultation with different stakeholders, including relevant industry segments, SDOs & ICT standardisation organisations, academia, and societal actors, on the interoperability requirement for the metaverse.

Action 2: SDOs to identify and inform about standardisation activities of relevance in supporting the development of interoperable metaverses and related technologies such as AR/VR or digital twins.

Action 3: SDOs to identify and inform about metaverse related standardisation activities in vertical sectors such as design & manufacturing, health, cultural heritage or education.  

(C.) Activities and additional information 

(C.1) Related standardisation activities
IEEE

IEEE has established the IEEE Metaverse Congress series ( https://engagestandards.ieee.org/IEEE-Metaverse-Congress.html ) and the IEEE Metaverse Community. IEEE has standardization and pre-standardization relating to metaverse, including:

  • IEEE P2048 Standard for Metaverse: Terminology, Definitions, and Taxonomy
  • P7016 Standard for Ethically Aligned Design and Operation of Metaverse Systems
  • P7030 Recommended Practice for Ethical Assessment of Extended Reality (XR) Technologies
  • P3322 Guide for Comfort Requirements for Extended Reality (XR) Devices
  • IEEE P3812.2 Standard for Feneral Requirements for Identity Framework for Metaverse

Pre-standards activities include The IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Extended Reality. This group developed a series of papers that can be found on itss website, and of particular note is Metaverse and its Governance https://standards.ieee.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/XR_Metaverse_Governance.pdf

Other papers include:

More information can be found here: https://ieeesa.io/eu-rolling-plan

IEC

IEC/TC 100

TC 100 develops international standards in the field of audio, video and multimedia systems and equipment. Since its establishment, TC 100 has developed international standards regarding colour measurement and management, digital system interfaces and protocols, wearable electronic devices and technologies and applications for end-user networks.

Recently, it has established a WG 12 on metaverse (WG 12 Multimedia systems and equipment for metaverse), to define and analyze metaverse for future multimedia systems and equipment from a technical and standardization perspective. WG 12 has the following preliminary work item in its program of work:

  • Title: Concept of metaverse for multimedia equipment and standardization areas in the TC 100
  • Purpose: To identify standardization gaps in TC100, find potential new work items
  • Scope: 1) Definition of the metaverse. 2) Impact of the metaverse on multimedia systems and equipment (i.e., interoperability between devices, user interfaces, interaction methods, implementation aspects, etc.). 3) Standardization gaps and potential new work items for TC 100, 4) Development of a document based on the above study.

The following relevant standards are published by TC 100:

The following standards are under development in TC 100:

ISO/IEC JTC 1

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29

SC 29 (Coding of audio, picture, multimedia and hypermedia information) contains the well-known JPEG and MPEG standardization groups. Most of its work is related to interoperability standardization for efficiently coded media, and thus falls into two basic areas:

  • Efficient coding of media, including images, moving pictures, audio, graphics, fonts, haptic signals, point clouds, visual volumetric content, and other digital data
  • Digital information support, including synchronization, presentation, storage and transport of single or combinations of media and related security and privacy management

 These technologies are fundamental to metaverse/VR/AR development. Efficient coded representations for storage and communication of audio, video, haptics, etc., is fundamentally necessary for such applications. Moreover, the systems protocols control and use of such media are also required for operation of such a system. In addition to the traditional projects for which JPEG and MPEG standards are especially widely known, some recent areas of work in SC 29 that relate to metaverse applications are highlighted as follows:

  • Point cloud coding for representation of spatial information
  • Visual volumetric content coding using either video-based or graphics-based representations.
  • 3D audio with support for audio objects that interact with audio scenes, such as exhibiting appropriate behaviour in response to spatial navigation, including echoes, occlusion, spatial orientation and distance effects.
  • Haptic signal coding for interaction with virtual worlds.
  • Coding of visual content for use by machine analysis systems as well as for display to human observers

More information available here: https://www.iso.org/committee/45316.html

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 24

To provide metaverse services for human life, the following fundamental standard technologies are needed in addition to knowledge information processing for each industry sector that integrates into a 3D virtual world:

  • 3D virtual world representation, visualization, and information processing
  • 3D avatar representation, visualization, and information processing
  • VR/AR/MR-based information processing with 3D virtual worlds and avatars

SC 24 has published the following standards relevant to these three areas:

  • 3D virtual world representation
    • ISO/IEC 14772 VRML series (Virtual Reality Modeling Language)
    • ISO/IEC 19775 X3D series (Extensible 3D)
    • ISO/IEC 19776 X3D encoding series (Extensible 3D encoding)
    • ISO/IEC 19777 X3D language bindings series (Extensible 3D language bindings)
    • ISO/IEC 18023 SEDRIS series (Synthetic Environment Data Representation and Interchange Specification)
    • ISO/IEC 18024 SEDRIS language bindings series
    • ISO/IEC 18025 EDCS (Environmental Data Coding Specification)
    • ISO/IEC 18026 SRM (Spatial Reference Model)
  • 3D avatar representation
    • ISO/IEC 19774 Humanoid Animation (HAnim) series
  • VR/AR/MR-based information processing with 3D virtual worlds and avatars
    • ISO/IEC 18038 Sensor representation in mixed and augmented reality
    • ISO/IEC 18039 Mixed and augmented reality (MAR) reference model
    • ISO/IEC 18040 Live actor and entity representation in mixed and augmented reality
    • ISO/IEC 18520 Benchmarking of vision-based registration and tracking methods for mixed and augmented reality
    • ISO/IEC 23884 Material property and parameter representation for model-based haptic simulation of objects in virtual, mixed and augmented reality (VR/MAR)
    • ISO/IEC 23488 Object/environmental representation for image-based rendering in virtual/mixed and augmented reality (VR/MAR)

 The following standards are under development in SC 24:

  • ISO/IEC 3721-1 Information model for MAR contents
  • ISO/IEC 5927 Augmented and virtual reality safety – guidance on safe immersion, setup and usage
  • ISO/IEC 19774-3 HAnim facial animation
  • ISO/IEC 9234 Information modeling for VR/AR/MR based education and training systems

 The following are potential new work items under discussion in SC24:

  • Metaverse concepts, terminology, and definitions
  • Sensor information modeling in MAR
  • Benchmarking of indoor localization and tracking systems
  • Use case classification for VR/AR/MR based education systems
  • VR/AR/MR based education and training systems – Part 1: Terminology and Concepts

 More information available here: https://www.iso.org/committee/45252.html

ITU-T

ITU-T started metaverse specific studies within various Study Groups, namely SG16, SG17 and SG20. An ITU workshop was organized on metaverse and multimedia on 18 October 2022. The ITU-T TSAG established in December 2022 a new Focus Group on metaverse (FG-MV) to carry out pre-standardization work with specific terms of reference.

More details: https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/focusgroups/mv

Many ITU-T Recommendations (standards) have been published that can be seen as building blocks for future metaverse applications and systems (including the field of Immersive Live Environments, Distributed Ledger Technologies and Digital Humans), some of which are:

There are also several ITU-T Recommendations (standards) under study:

In the framework of the United for Smart Cities and Communities (U4SCC) a new “Working Group on Multiverse - The Next Generation of Digital Platforms in Cities” has been established with a view to develop a report on metaverse in cities.

(C.2) Other activities related to standardisation 
Metaverse Standards Forum (MSF)

Facilitates cooperation and coordination between international standards organizations. The Forum will not create standards itself but will coordinate requirements and resources to foster the creation and evolution of standards within standards organizations working in relevant domains.

Link: https://metaverse-standards.org/

[31] President von der Leyen’s State of the Union 2022. Letter of intent

[32] Commissioner Breton blog People, technologies & infrastructure – Europe’s plan to thrive in the metaverse

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