Join us…. join the open standards…

LAS VEGAS—With everybody and their brother seemingly working on their own mutually exclusive virtual reality platform these days, it would be nice if everybody could somehow agree on some standards that allow VR games, hardware, and accessories to be easily interoperable with each other. Facebook-owned Oculus has gained a reputation for defending its own platform in order to protect access to exclusive content. In a presentation at the DICE conference this week, though, Oculus’ Head of Content Jason Rubin pushed back on this reputation and highlighted the company’s work on developing standards in the VR space.

“This is actually a place where we agree with the industry more than most people think,” Rubin said. “We support an open standard… We want everybody in the PC business to join an open standard that’s a platform where everybody gets to say what’s important to them.”

Here, Rubin is referencing Oculus’ work with the Khronos group (of OpenGL fame) on developing a common set of industry-wide VR standards. Announced back in December, the effort aims to create a set of “APIs for tracking of headsets, controllers and other objects, and for easily integrating devices into a VR runtime. This will enable applications to be portable to any VR system that conforms to the Khronos standard, significantly enhancing the end-user experience, and driving more choice of content to spur further growth in the VR market.”