October 2021 Newsletter

Welcome to the VR Industry Forum Newsletter

Keeping you updated about our activities! Here we highlight our latest work and focus on areas which are most critical.

A Message from the President 

Rounding out 2021, we can say that it’s truly been a “virtual year.” Due to ongoing COVID concerns we have virtually met for all activities and perhaps most of you are feeling the “online meeting fatigue.” We have made best efforts to adapt to this ongoing reality, striving to keep content interesting and of value for you. A good consequence has been the introduction of our successful online open events. We hope that moving into the next year we will once again be able meet in person. We are looking forward to the time when we can reconnect and more effectively progress our common goals!

For the remainder of 2021 we will continue our work to help the industry ignite immersive services:

  • Publish a brand-new guideline “Volumetric 1.0” addressing end-to-end workflows for Volumetric streaming using MPEG point cloud encoding profiles
  • Participate in external events such as the 2021 World Conference on VR Industry in China
  • Organize the VRIF 3rd Open Industry Online event (27th October), this time the theme is about VR/XR Trends and Innovation from the Asia Pacific Region (for more information see below)

Preparing for 2022

The coming year brings new, exciting challenges and at our recent annual member meeting we agreed to progress the following topics:

  • VR360: 8K end-2-end workflows: addressing challenges, state of the art and the facto standards in the industry
  • Volumetric: mesh delivery and understanding the impact of future codecs such as Versatile Video Coding (VVC)
  • Social VR: what technology is required and how to orchestrate sessions
  • 5G Cloud: addressing use cases, trials, and commercial deployments

VRIF Member Testimonial – Irdeto

Irdeto is the world leader in digital platform security, protecting platforms and applications for video entertainment, video games, connected transport, connected health and IoT connected industries. Irdeto’s solutions and services enable customers to protect their revenue, create new offerings and fight cybercrime effectively.

Irdeto is a VR Industry Forum founding member and has been working actively in the VRIF since it was first start set up, having participated in the earlier VR Industry group discussions that led to its formation.

VR, 360 degree video, Augmented Reality and associated technologies, bring exciting opportunities for new solutions in existing mature markets, as well as the potential to open up entirely new market spaces. As with all exciting and high potential new services, there is a need to protect both the content and the service provider’s investment and also to protect the users of these new services from any potential piracy or security threats.

Irdeto has been working to provide security steer and to help define guidelines that ensure that these new services can build on and leverage existing media security mechanisms. In addition, we have been collaborating with our colleagues in the VRIF working groups to help identify the requirements and guidelines for the new protection and security approaches that these exciting new technologies demand.

Participation in VRIF, in particular the guidelines group where we have put our focus, has enabled us to build the best possible understanding of these emerging VR, 360 video and AR technologies. These new media formats are quite different at times, and often vastly more complex, than traditional media and this complexity extends to securing the content and protecting the users. Working with our industry peers in the VRIF has allowed us to understand not only how to best secure these technologies with today’s delivery mechanisms and user devices, but also to prepare for the next generation of server side and client side computing platforms. 

With a unique heritage in security innovation, Irdeto is the well-established and reliable partner to build a secure future leveraging advanced technologies like VR/AR and the solutions they enable, a future where people can embrace connectivity without fear.

Announcing VRIF’s 3rd Open Workshop

VR Trends & Innovation from the Asia Pacific Region: October 27, Online

Join us online on October 27 for this engaging talk as we bridge the APAC ecosystem. Connect with industry experts from China, South Korea and India as they share VR trends and innovations from the Asia Pacific Region.
Guest speakers include:

  • From India: Chaitanya Chinchlikar, Vice President & Business Head/ CTO & Head of Emerging Media, Whistling Woods International
  • From China: Shao Gang, Strategy Dept-Industry Alliance Development Dept, Huawei
  • From South Korea: Seong Yong Lim, Researcher, Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI)

For more information and to Register click HERE.

Streaming Video Alliance (SVA) VR Study Group Report

8K Viewpoint Independent Trial

The Streaming Video Alliance (SVA) VR Study Group has finalized its trial of 8K VR viewport that is independently aligned with the VRIF Guidelines. The tests were performed on the Verizon FiOS network by several testers, using an Oculus QUEST2. While the outcomes are still internal to the SVA, they agreed to share the following:

  • On the subjective side, users prefer the Single Bit Rate (SBR) experience, as they see the highest quality right away. The Adaptive Bit Rate (ABR) version is not convenient as it takes currently too much time to climb the ladder, this will be fixed in future release of the Viaccess Orca (VO) player. Meanwhile, once the ABR player is on top profile, the player stays on this profile all the time, which was a key element to confirm.
  • From the 4K vs 8K (SBR), on the Formula 3 (F3) VRIF content, it was not possible to see a difference, which explains why some part of the industry is still on 4K, but on Harmonic’s content that will be made available to the SVA for the trial, we can see a significant difference using a high-resolution capture system with a static scene.
  • On the subjective side, it was seen that the NPAW happiness score being always higher than 6.4 (out of 10), with average of 6.8 on all tested scenarios, and highest score of 7.8 (8K ABR), which shows satisfactory QoE.
  • The Open Caching brings overall an improvement of 5% in the happiness score, joint time is reduced by 66% percent as expected, depending on the bitrate measurement tool used (NPAW resp VO), it was seen an increased in profile BW used by 8% and 17%, while the streamed BW is increased by 51% as expected.

The SVA has started to test Widevine L1 DRM on 8K ABR streams, and they see a limitation in the QUEST2 that can only decode for time being few frames per second, this is under investigation.

The SVA is preparing a paper on the trial that will be submitted to different conferences and it will make it available on its web site.

The SVA believes that this is the world’s first 8K viewport independent trial with QoE analytics that also includes Widevine L1 DRM.

The SVA VR Study group is quite happy about the outcome of the trial and wants to thank the VRIF for its support and proposes to continue the discussions once the trial paper is written.

Contributed by Thierry Fautier, Streaming Video Alliance VR/360-Degree Video Study Group Co-Chair

Catch Up on Past VRIF Activities

VRIF leadership continues its efforts to keep the organization in the forefront of industry events. Here are the latest event recordings offered to help keep you up to date.

  • On July 7th, Mauricio Aracena, VRIF President, and Tom De Koninck, VRIF Communications WG Chairman, were invited to speak at the Laval Virtual conference.
    • As a first topic, Mauricio talked about Volumetric Streaming over 5G. In this talk he presented the end-to-end functional chain and the way 5G edge compute can enable better and more scalable implementation of volumetric video streaming. The talk is available to watch in VRIF’s YouTube Channel.
    • As a second topic, Tom De Koninck was a panelist to discuss what’s to come in extended reality. The panel was led by Jean-Philippe Encausse and other panelists were Sven Bliedung von der Heide from Volucap, Hervé Fontaine from HTC and Gabriel Brostow from Niantic. This panel talk is also available on VRIF’s YouTube Channel.  

The conference was a hybrid event, with both in-person (in France) participation and, virtual participation via Virbela. Both talks were done in the Virbela virtual conference hall.

Upcoming Events

The VR Industry Forum will be participating in the following events:

  • VRIF President, Mauricio Aracena will be speaking at the World Conference on VR industry in Nanchang on 19-20 of October about 5G and Cloud VR
  • VRIF, President, Mauricio Aracena and Tom De Koninck, VRIF Communications WG Chairman are planning to speak at VRDays in Amsterdam on 13-17 of November

And, of course, we will be following the upcoming IBC, CES and MWC conferences.

If you’re not already a Member – Join Today!

Membership Information

The VRIF is an organization built by the VR community and maintained by it. As a valuable member of this community, we ask you to consider joining the VRIF organization. Yearly membership already starts at $1000. More details can be found on our website: https://www.vr-if.org/membership-benefits/
Some key member benefits:

  • Contribute to the future of immersive video and drive the Guidelines by participating in our various Work Groups
  • Define VRIF priorities
  • Promote your leadership through speaking and other opportunities
  • Network with industry experts
  • Full access to MPEG standards and working documents
  • Participate in interoperability testing with early access to guidelines, content and other tools

Many industry leaders already see the importance and value of VRIF. Join today and add your voice. We welcome your participation and look forward to meeting soon.

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