Metaverse Interoperability Challenges and Impact

Here are four components of interoperability that need to be addressed to create an open and easily traversed metaverse.

Identity. Identity forms the root chain of trust for connecting individuals to actions and assets. Today, consumer identity is often built on a chain of trust that is linked to email, social media platforms, Google or Apple. Business use cases in the metaverse will likely build on an enterprise’s existing identity and access management (IAM) infrastructure.

O3DF’s O’Brien said that standardization of identity and authentication, transactions, and a standard means of data interoperability across multiple immersive platforms are essential aspects of metaverse interoperability in the short run.

“Until I know who you are and how I can transact with you, as well as the means to hand you off to another server experience, you will break immersion,” he said, referring to being jolted out of the illusion of being in another world, or in a business context from the flow of work.

Croquet’s Smith added that identities are more than just the avatars representing the user. Every user will have multiple avatar representations and sometimes multiple ones in the same world. Identities help connect a wealth of information to an avatar, including not only the avatar’s wallet but also its preferences, history, reputation and abilities.

3D rendering. There are many levels to standardizing 3D representations of virtual worlds. 3D modeling and rendering engines need to interoperate. AR, VR and extended reality headsets need to work across platforms. Users need to be able to share 3D objects across platforms and render them at scale.

Progress is being made. Jonathan Girroir, technical evangelist at Tech Soft 3D, a software development kit provider, said that “metaverses and digital worlds have been a forcing factor in our industry to standardize on high-fidelity 3D file formats that allow us to move data in and out of these worlds.”

Promising approaches include the following:

• graphics language transmission format for sharing 3D objects;
• universal scene description (USD) open file format for sharing 3D worlds;
• fbx for sharing textures and lighting effects; and
• 3D Tiles for efficiently streaming 3D content at scale.

Behaviors and properties. There needs to be a standard way to characterize the behavior and properties of objects in the metaverse that translates across platforms. “These are the things that make the objects in the metaverse come alive and be responsive to the users,” said Smith. To do that, behaviors and properties must be persistent, copyable and able to move between worlds.

In the industrial metaverse, this could include physical properties and the costs of components or materials in an object to automatically compute the bill of materials. Nvidia is championing its PhysX engine as one approach for describing physical properties in the industrial metaverse.

Data sharing. An open metaverse also requires a decentralized approach to sharing information across the worlds. Decentralized ledgers like blockchain have been championed as one approach. Early blockchain use cases have helped spark a market for nonfungible tokens (NFTs), which allow people to buy and sell assets like art and land on the web. Down the road, more sophisticated NFTs could enable complex revenue-sharing agreements. For example, multiple artists could each automatically receive a royalty when their songs are remixed into a new compilation that grows popular.

In contrast, Tim Berners Lee, who pioneered the web, is advocating for a new web data infrastructure called Solid that does not use blockchain. It allows individuals to control how their data can be reused after the fact. This could prove crucial for enterprise metaverse use cases that create value for consumers, patients and citizens while respecting the owner’s changing wishes.