VRIF has achieved many successes since its inception in 2017. Established to address issues surrounding interoperability and quality, we came together to exchange ideas and to seek a greater understanding of how to make VR work from end-to-end.
We have written guidelines for establishing interoperability and encouraged good production and distribution quality through organizing industry workshops, master classes and speaking engagements.
We have supported our industry partners, helping to prioritize their efforts and used our guidelines to promote best practices for adopting the standards coming from industry SDOs.
In late 2023, after careful consideration, the Board approved the dissolution of the organization. Mauricio Aracena, VRIF President, stated “We feel that we can conclude our work knowing that the VRIF made a positive impact on the industry and that personal and professional connections were strengthened.”
We are pleased to share the highlights of our combined successes:
2017
- VR Industry Forum open meeting at CES, January 5 2017, Las Vegas, USA
- Organized and held an open meeting at NAB
- Participated in the Future Reality Zone at IBC and held a super session in conjunction with DASH-IF, entitled From OTT to VR
- Presented “Creating a Market for Entertainment Video in VR“ at VR on the Lot
- First Workshop on VR Ecosystem & Standards, Hosted by Ericsson in Santa Clara, CA, USA
- First draft of Guidelines published for public review
- Published Lexicon of terms that applies to the fields of virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR), and 360-degree video
2018
- Published first version of our Guidelines 1.0 and a Maintenance update (v 1.1) on VR360
- Participated at major industry events, including:
- CES with a Master Class on our Guidelines and Industry developments
- NAB with another Master Class and a booth in the Futures Park
- World Broadcasting Union, contributed to “Future of VR in News and Documentary Film Making” session
- IBC participation with live demos in the Future Zone, an another Master Class
- VRS with a sponsored lunch session on Defining VR360 Standards
- On the Lot, with a session co-organized with 3GPP
2019
- Organized the 2nd Workshop on VR Ecosystem & Standards, co‑organized with 3GPP and the Advanced Imaging Society, at the Sony Studios in Los Angeles. The theme was: “Immersive Media Meets 5G”
- Published Guidelines 2.0 with focus on Live Services, Text and Font use in VR, watermarking for “framed content” and attention to HDR.
- Publication in IEEE Explore: “VRIF’s View on State of the Immersive Media Industry“
2020
- Published Guidelines 2.2 to be the first to recommend 8K profiles for VR services over 5G. We also succeeded to influence MPEG and 3GPP SA4 to adopt 8K operating points
- Created four parallel tracks to have better focus on advances of new technologies: VR360, Volumetric, Social VR and 5G Cloud
- Launched periodical newsletters to keep the VR community informed
- Publication in the SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal: “ VRIF Guidelines on Live VR Services”
- Publication of the technical paper: “Live VR end-to-end workflows: real-life deployments and advances in VR and network technology“
- Initiated a collaboration with Streaming Video Technology Alliance (SVTA) to test and evaluate VR quality
- Organized the first Virtual Reality Industry Forum Open Online Session
- Participated at major industry events, including:
2021
- Published Guidelines 2.3 including features from OMAF v2 such as unconstrained HEVC profiles as well as multiple viewpoints and overlay
- Organized the VRIF 2nd Open Industry Online event
- Participated at major industry events, including:
- Published a brand-new draft guideline “Volumetric Video Guidelines” addressing end-to-end workflows for Volumetric streaming using MPEG point cloud encoding profiles
- Organized the VRIF 3rd Open Industry Online event, this time the theme is about VR/XR Trends and Innovation from the Asia Pacific Region
2022
- Organized our first hybrid event in Berlin: VRIF Volumetric Guidelines Masterclass & Workshop
- Participated in the FOKUS Media Web Symposium
- Published an updated version of our Volumetric guidelines, Volumetric 1.0, to include security considerations for content protection
- Participated in the SMPTE Technology Summit in Hollywood with of our technical paper: “Solving the challenge of Volumetric Video Production and Streaming: An end-to-end perspective of technologies and device ecosystem capabilities and performance”
2023
- Participated in the Production Technology Seminar
- Participated in the SMPTE Technology Summit in Hollywood with our technical paper: “The evolution of immersive media over 5G Cloud”
