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) — April 24, 2019 — 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™.

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