Khronos Establishes Exploratory Group for 3D Commerce Standards and Guidelines

Leading retailers, manufacturers and technology companies propose
collaboration on open standards to enable cross-vendor creation and
deployment of photorealistic 3D virtual products; Interested companies
are invited to join Exploratory Group to provide input and feedback

PORTLAND, Ore.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/3D?src=hash” target=”_blank”gt;#3Dlt;/agt;–The Khronos^® Group, an open consortium of leading companies
creating advanced 3D standards, today announces the formation of an
Exploratory Group to investigate the creation of standards and
guidelines for the production and distribution of real-time 3D
representations of products, so they can be experienced realistically
and consistently across all platforms and devices, such as mobile, Web
and Augmented Reality (AR) or Virtual Reality (VR) solutions. To gather
industry input, the Exploratory Group is open to any company without
cost or IP licensing obligations. If there is industry support, Khronos
will form a Working Group to enable any interested company to join
Khronos and participate under its proven multi-company governance
process. Those interested in finding out more and joining the
Exploratory Group are invited to visit the 3D
Commerce Landing Page.

According to an April
2019 Gartner press release, “by 2020, 100 million consumers will
shop in AR online and in-store” and “46 percent of retailers planned to
deploy either AR or VR solutions to meet customer service experience
requirements.”[1] Gartner states that “the impact of AR or VR in retail
can be transformative”, and that “retailers can use AR as an extension
of the brand experience to engage customers in immersive environments
and drive revenue…Additionally, AR can be used outside the store after a
sale to increase customer satisfaction and improve loyalty.”[2]

With 3D poised to grow as a new shopping medium for product
manufacturers, retailers and advertising platforms, key players in the
industry are now looking at how to scale production and achieve broad
distribution for virtual products with optimized industry workflows to
minimize costs. The leading global retail brands and technology
companies proposing this initiative include 3XR, 4D Pipeline, Adobe,
Autodesk, Dassault Systèmes, Deloitte Consulting, Facebook, Ferguson
Ventures, Google, Houzz, IKEA, JD.com,
Lowe’s, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Pinterest, Qualcomm, Samsung, Shopify,
Target, ThreeKit, Topline Furniture, Unity Technologies, UX3D, Wayfair,
and Williams-Sonoma Inc./Outward.

The aim of this initiative is to enable 3D virtual products to be
experienced realistically and consistently across a variety of
endpoints, including search results, social feeds, ad units, in apps, on
e-commerce websites, on mobile AR devices and VR/AR headsets, and on
in-store displays. Standard specifications and guidelines would align
and streamline interactions between retailers and manufacturers working
with technology providers, content creators, and technology platforms
distributing and displaying virtual products.

This initiative would also leverage and guide the evolution of existing
Khronos standards such as glTF for transmission of photorealistic 3D
assets, WebGL for interactive 3D applications on the Web, Vulkan for
driving high-performance interactive 3D graphics, and OpenXR for
enabling AR and VR applications that are portable across multiple vendor
platforms.

[1] Gartner Press Release, “Gartner Says 100 Million Consumers Will
Shop in Augmented Reality Online and In-Store by 2020, April 1, 2019. https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2019-04-01-gartner-says-100-million-consumers-will-shop-in-augme
[2]
Ibid.

About the Khronos Group
The Khronos Group is an open
industry consortium of over 140 leading hardware and software companies
creating advanced, royalty-free, acceleration standards for 3D graphics,
Augmented and Virtual Reality, vision processing and machine learning.
Khronos standards include Vulkan®, OpenGL®, OpenGL® ES, OpenGL® SC,
WebGL™, SPIR-V™, OpenCL™, SYCL™, OpenVX™, NNEF™, COLLADA™, OpenXR™ and
glTF™.

Contacts

Alex Crabb
Khronos Group Press Contact
alex@castercomm.com
+1
401-792-7080