Virtual Reality Industry Forum's View on State of the Immersive Media Industry
Ozgur Oyman, Rob Koenen, Paul Higgs, Chris Johns, Richard Mills, Mick O'Doherty
Founded at the Consumer Electronics Show in 2017, the Virtual Reality Industry Forum (VRIF) (www.vr-if.org) is chartered with the mission to further the widespread availability of high-quality audiovisual (AV) virtual reality (VR) experiences. Its charter includes delivering guidelines and advocating industry consensus around common technical standards for the end-to-end VR interoperability from content production through distribution to consumption. VRIF delivered the first release of its guidelines in early 2018, detailing an initial set of best practices and recommendations for realizing high-quality, interoperable 360° video experiences. It is currently working toward releasing Guidelines version 2.0 with the inclusion of new features such as live VR services, high dynamic range (HDR) support, use of text and fonts, and watermarking for theatrical VR. New features on VRIF’s 2019 roadmap include guidelines around volumetric content production and distribution, cloud VR and edge computing, augmented reality (AR) support, and enabling social VR experiences.