Standard-Setting: a New Focus in Chinese XR, Following IEEE Global Metaverse Congress Qianhai Summit
October 2022 was a busy month for the XR global conference circuit, with big name events like AWE EU, Meta Connect, and AES topping the list, but an event from September 30th in Shenzhen is worth a second look amid sparse English-language coverage: the IEEE Global Metaverse Congress Qianhai Summit. While the speakers list included key company executives, thought leaders, and investors, the focus of the conference was standard-setting in the Chinese VR / AR industry. IEEE leadership took the stage to announce that the IEEE Metaverse Standards Committee will set up a secretariat in Qianhai, a special trade zone in Shenzhen, to support Metaverse companies and to promote more rigorous standard-setting in the Chinese VR / AR industry.
Standard-setting in XR
Fragmentation across different development platforms and hardware ecosystems and interoperability barriers remain a significant challenge across various Metaverse-enabling technologies. Fundamentally, the idea of the Metaverse as the next generation of the internet requires a device and provider-agnostic environment, similar to how one can access web 2.0 properties regardless of one’s operating system and computing environment. Practically, standards and interoperability matter because a robust content ecosystem in VR or AR requires that developers and creators have access to a large number of potential users to make high-quality apps and experiences, whereas major players like Meta, Pico, Apple, and others are incentivized to create “walled garden” ecosystems where content and components cannot easily be used across ecosystems. This would harm equal market competition, stifle innovation, and build barriers for creators wishing to develop content for the Metaverse without depending on subsidies from hardware manufacturers.
The Conference
Key highlights of the conference and its focus on standard-setting included:
- Wang Jinxia, Deputy Director of the Qianhai Cooperation Zone Administration, said in his opening speech that Qianhai will build a Metaverse Application Test Demonstration Zone in the future, and support various innovative companies to use Qianhai’s resources and location in China’s Greater Bay Area (an urban amalgamation including key cities in Guangdong province as well as Hong Kong and Macau) to promote the development of the Metaverse.
- James Matthews, chairman of the organizer IEEE Standards Association and director of the IEEE Board of Directors, acknowledged the Shenzhen Qianhai Administration’s support and advocated for the use of IEEE standards in its work.
- Dr. Yu Yuan, Director-Elect of the IEEE Board of Directors and President-Elect of IEEE’s Standards Association, announced plans to create a Secretariat of the IEEE Metaverse Standards Committee in Qianhai. Yu also spoke to the importance of standard-setting in XR and coined a new term, IoM, the sum total of internet devices and architectures necessary for the Metaverse. He divided IoM into “two and a half” categories: technologies that facilitate perception and interaction, those that build a persistent virtual world, and, halfway perhaps because of its wide applications outside of the metaverse, technologies that facilitate digital finance and a digital economy.
- Neil Trevitt, Chairman of the Metaverse Standards Forum, President of the Khronos Group, and VP at NVIDIA, spoke on the importance of open and specific standards with rigorous certification mechanisms to facilitate a fair and open metaverse. He also noted the rapid growth of the Metaverse Standard Forum in the middle of 2022, with the organization recently reaching 1,700 members.
- Other speakers included leadership from HKUST, Midea Group, and Tencent Games, followed by a round table discussion hosted by Hu Lin from AWE Asia, with guests from Youye, WeShape3D, HiAR, and INMO. On reflecting on the round table discussion, AWE Asia’s Hu Lin said, “We’re currently experiencing a major hype cycle for all things in the Metaverse, but the Chinese XR industry should be prepared for the true test of commercialization and market competition. In order for Metaverse startups and entrepreneurs to be ready to meet the challenges of the market and develop sustainably, standards will be important, and the incomplete standardization of digital twin technologies are a great example of some of the work that lies ahead.”
China in Global Standard-Setting
Global technical standard-setting is far from…standard. There are about 200 standard development organizations (SDOs) globally, with many national and regional SDOs to boot. While SDOs are largely voluntary and industry-driven outside of China, China has been working on reforming its state-led approach to standard-setting since 2014 under the banner of China Standards 2035. In late 2021, China’s State Council published a standard setting strategy that provides more clear guidance to the Standardization Administration of China and other relevant agencies. The plan calls for more market participation in domestic standard-setting, for China to align 85% of its domestic standards with international standards, and for China to build 50 national technical standard innovation bases. For a deep dive on China’s role in technical standardization, we highly recommend Jude Blanchette’s conversation with Tim Rühlig on the Pekingology Podcast.
Alignment or Divergence on the Horizon?
The Qianhai Summit didn’t go into great detail on the particular nature of the standards that the Qianhai Secretariat would be developing and implementing, but the lineup of speakers suggests that standards will draw extensively from standards developed by IEEE, with input from the Metaverse Standards Forum. Given China’s large domestic market for XR and its centrality in global supply chains, it should come as no surprise that Chinese companies want to participate in standard-setting in XR and facilitate links with international SDOs.
Yet standard-setting for the Metaverse is an immensely complicated and unresolved project, spanning highly technical matters relating to 3D assets and rendering, to questions that took decades to develop for computers such as paradigms for identity management, privacy, and financial transactions. While IEEE and the Khronos Group are certainly prominent SDOs in XR, there are many other prominent SDOs in the industry, including (but certainly not limited to) the World Wide Web Consortium, the Open Geospatial Consortium, the Open AR Cloud, the Spatial Web Foundation, the OMI Group, OMG, the Web 3D Consortium, and the XRSI. Although the Metaverse Standards Forum aims to be a sort of umbrella for many of these groups and many in the industry recognize the importance of interoperability for the Metaverse to succeed, much work remains to be done before this ambition becomes a reality.
Parallels between Chinese and global standards for XR have already emerged. For example, In June 2022, China Mobile formally announced its GSXR interoperability framework, a local parallel to the Khronos Group’s OpenXR specification, the most prominent API specification overseas. And several Metaverse industry committees have been sprouting up around China over the past year, including China Mobile Communications Association’s Metaverse Industry Committee and MIIT’s Metaverse Industry Professional Committee.
Qianhai’s Secretariat of the IEEE Standards Committee comes at this exciting time for global standard-setting in XR. For those with an interest in the XR industry in China and Asia more broadly, as well as the complex interplay of actors and incentives that are shaping standard-setting practices in and outside of Asia, be sure to join AWE Asia in August of 2023!
