VR Industry Forum to present industry guidelines

The Virtual Reality Industry Forum (VRIF) is due to present the first draft of its industry guidelines at IBC this year.

The guidelines will emphasise interoperability and are designed to spur on the availability of “high quality audiovisual VR experiences”.

The initial release will focus on the delivery of 360° video with three degrees of freedom and will include: documentation of cross-industry interoperability; best industry practices for production of VR360 content, with an emphasis on human factors like motion sickness; and security considerations for VR360 streaming, including user privacy and content protection.

“What is so unique about these guidelines is they take the interests of all ecosystem participants into account and focus on important, but often overlooked factors,” said Paul Higgs of Huawei, who is chair of the guidelines working group and board member of VRIF.

“The VR industry is starting to move away from proprietary systems and toward large scale solutions, and the guidelines facilitate that transition.

“The purpose of presenting a draft of the guidelines at IBC is to give the public a chance to review them and identify any issues, so that we can incorporate as much relevant information as possible.”

The VRIF said that, post-IBC, the finalised guidelines will be released at the Consumer Electronics Show in January to mark one year since the launch of the organisation.

The forum currently has some 40 members from across the movie, television, mobile, broadcast and interactive gaming sectors. Its members include Sky, Nokia, Dolby, Ericsson, Harmonic, Huawei, Intel, Qualcomm, the DTG, EBU and CableLabs.

The guidelines will be discussed by VRIF at a session co-hosted with the DASH Industry Forum (DASH-IF) on Saturday September 16 at 5pm in room E102 of the Rai