Virtual Reality Industry Forum

Virtual Reality Industry Forum
Information
Type	Non-profit industry forum
Industry	Virtual reality media, 360-degree video, video distribution
Founded	5 January 2017 (launched at CES in Las Vegas); dissolved at the end of 2023
Founder	28 founding member organizations, including Ericsson, Huawei, Intel, Qualcomm, Sky and Sony Pictures
Headquarters	Fremont, California, United States
Notable Personnel	Rob Koenen (president, 2017), Paul Higgs (president until September 2019), Mauricio Aracena (president from September 2019 to 2023)
Products	VRIF Guidelines (versions 1.0 to 2.3), Volumetric Video Guidelines 1.0, VRIF Lexicon
Website	https://web.archive.org/web/20241213061018/https://www.vr-if.org/ (archived; the site went offline after 2024)

The Virtual Reality Industry Forum (VRIF, also called the VR Industry Forum) was a non-profit industry group that wrote voluntary guidelines for producing and delivering 360-degree video and other audiovisual VR content in an interoperable way. Twenty-eight companies announced it at CES in Las Vegas on 5 January 2017, among them Ericsson, Huawei, Intel, Qualcomm, Sky and Sony Pictures. Its stated purpose was "to further the widespread availability of high quality audiovisual VR experiences, for the benefit of consumers."

VRIF was not a standards body. Its bylaws said it would rely on and liaise with standards development organizations, and that adoption of its work products was voluntary and not binding on members or anyone else. Its main output was a series of guidelines built on MPEG's Omnidirectional Media Format (OMAF), first released in 2018 and revised up to version 2.3 in 2021, plus a separate set of Volumetric Video Guidelines. The board approved the forum's dissolution in late 2023, and VRIF dissolved at the end of that year.

Reviewed 13 October 2026. Checked launch date, founding members, origins, leadership changes, guideline versions and dates, dissolution, bylaws and both SMPTE papers against the archived vr-if.org pages, the bylaws PDF, Crossref, TVBEurope, Display Daily, Streaming Media, Digital Signage Today and the W3C list post. About review dates.

History

Origins (2016)

According to the forum's own account, VRIF grew out of two informal efforts that began in 2016. The DTG and Harmonic convened a meeting at CES 2016 with a few companies worried that the new VR industry would fragment. In parallel, Ericsson started a broader collaboration on the same concerns, prompted in part by the expectation that 5G networks, with more unicast bandwidth and lower latency, would suit VR. Ericsson, DTG and Harmonic then hosted a dinner at the NAB Show with 62 representatives from more than 40 companies. Bi-weekly calls followed, and this "VR Interest Group" grew to more than 200 people from 70 organizations. At a meeting during IBC 2016, the group decided to set up a formal forum. The launch press release likewise described the forum as the result of informal meetings over the previous 12 months, initiated by the DTG and involving more than 200 people. The bylaws of VR Industry Forum, Inc. describe it as a nonprofit nonstock corporation, refer to the Delaware General Corporation Law, and carry a 2016 approval date, before the public launch.

Launch (2017)

The forum was announced at CES on 5 January 2017. The 28 founding members were Akamai Technologies, ARRIS International, b<>com, Baylor University, CableLabs, Cinova Media, Dolby Laboratories, DTG, DTS, the EBU, Ericsson, Fraunhofer, Harmonic, Huawei, Intel, Irdeto, Ittiam, MovieLabs, NABPILOT, Qualcomm Technologies, Technicolor, TNO, Sky, Sony Pictures, Vantrix, Verizon, Viaccess-Orca and Orah. David Price, vice president of business development at Ericsson, said the members hoped "to ensure that the VR industry avoids the fragmentation of standards and formats that has plagued audio-visual media in the past".

The launch announcement listed four goals: advocating voluntary industry consensus on common technical standards from creation to delivery and consumption; advocating interoperable standards and common profiles (VRIF said it would not develop standards itself); writing voluntary best-practice guidelines; and promoting VR services and applications. Display Daily reported that the earlier interest group had set up 15 working groups that were expected to continue under VRIF, and that a lexicon of more than 240 VR terms in seven categories was already being drafted.

VRIF held an open meeting at the NAB Show in Las Vegas on 23 April 2017. The tiled-streaming company Tiledmedia became its 40th member. Rob Koenen of TNO, one of the two press contacts named in the launch release, was the forum's president during 2017. In 2017 the forum also published its lexicon of terms for virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality and 360-degree video, and held its first Workshop on VR Ecosystem & Standards, hosted by Ericsson in Santa Clara, California.

Guidelines and growth (2017-2019)

VRIF published a 68-page draft of its guidelines for public comment on 13 September 2017 and discussed it at a business super session with the DASH Industry Forum at IBC in Amsterdam on 16 September. Comments were due by 31 October 2017. In December 2017 the forum announced its first guidelines, and it presented them at a two-hour master class at CES 2018 on 8 January 2018. Streaming Media reported that VRIF then had more than 40 member organizations and planned 2018 work on six degrees of freedom, live VR services and HDR. Koenen, then VRIF president, said in the announcement that the forum was cooperating closely with MPEG, 3GPP, DVB, the VR Society and the ITU. The guidelines were formally published as version 1.0 in March 2018 and updated to version 1.1 in June 2018.

During 2018 VRIF ran master classes at CES, NAB and IBC and showed live demonstrations at IBC. At IBC 2018 it exhibited demos from Imeve, Nokia with Fraunhofer, and Qualcomm that implemented the guidelines.

By February 2019, Paul Higgs of Huawei had succeeded Koenen as president. VRIF described Higgs as a founding member of the forum; he had been serving as treasurer on its board. Koenen said he was leaving TNO to concentrate on Tiledmedia and so had to step down as president and board chair. In January 2019 W3C staff relayed a VRIF liaison statement inviting community review of the draft Guidelines 2.0 to the W3C Media & Entertainment Interest Group, with feedback due by 1 March 2019. The forum's second Workshop on VR Ecosystem & Standards, organized with 3GPP and the Advanced Imaging Society at the Sony studios in Los Angeles, had the theme "Immersive Media Meets 5G". VRIF announced Guidelines 2.0 on 27 June 2019.

The leadership page in April 2019 listed Higgs as president, Chris Johns of Sky as vice president, Mauricio Aracena of Ericsson as secretary and Ozgur Oyman of Intel as treasurer, with directors from Harmonic, Nokia and TNO. In September 2019 the forum announced the election of a new board of directors and officers, with Aracena as president.

Later work and dissolution (2020-2023)

In 2020 VRIF split its work into four tracks: VR360, Volumetric, Social VR and 5G Cloud. It also began a newsletter, started a collaboration with the Streaming Video Technology Alliance (SVTA) to test and evaluate VR quality, and held its first online open session. In 2021 it released Guidelines 2.3 and a draft of its Volumetric Video Guidelines, and in 2022 it held a hybrid volumetric master class and workshop in Berlin and published Volumetric Video Guidelines 1.0. The leadership page in mid-2022 listed Aracena as president, secretary and Requirements Working Group chair, and Higgs as vice president and treasurer. Its last listed activities, in 2023, were participation in a Production Technology Seminar and a paper on immersive media over 5G and the cloud at the SMPTE technology summit.

In late 2023 the board approved the dissolution of the organization, and VRIF dissolved at the end of 2023. Aracena said: "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." The forum said its website, with the guideline documents, would stay online until 31 December 2024, after which the material would be available through the Wayback Machine.

Guidelines

The VRIF Guidelines covered the production and delivery of 360-degree video with three degrees of freedom. The first draft covered production, compression, storage, delivery and security, documented interoperability points based on MPEG's OMAF, gave production practices aimed at human factors such as motion sickness, and addressed user privacy and content protection. For audio, the draft favored scene-based or object-based sound over stereo or 5.1, because the sound field has to move as the viewer turns their head.

Version	Released	Main additions
Draft for public comment	13 September 2017	68-page draft presented at IBC 2017
1.0	March 2018 (final draft at CES, January 2018)	Interoperable production and delivery of 360-degree video; interoperability sections on nine key aspects
1.1	June 2018	Minor corrections and clarifications
2.0	27 June 2019	Live VR services, text and fonts in VR, watermarking of 2D framed content in theatrical VR, use of HDR, and a media profile with an enhanced-quality viewport
2.1	Not dated on the guidelines page	Live VR deployments by Tiledmedia and Intel Sports; presentation APIs based on Khronos OpenXR 1.0
2.2	2020	Media distribution profile for viewport-independent delivery of 8K video
2.3	2021	Viewport-independent and viewport-dependent delivery profiles aligned with OMAF 2nd edition (ISO/IEC 23090-2) for 8K content, plus multiple viewpoints and overlays

VRIF described Guidelines 2.2 as the first to recommend 8K profiles for VR services over 5G and said it had influenced MPEG and 3GPP SA4 to adopt 8K operating points. In 2019 its roadmap added volumetric content, cloud VR/AR with edge computing, and social VR.

The Volumetric Video Guidelines were released as draft version 0.95 for public review in 2021 and as version 1.0 in 2022. They covered production workflows for meshes and point clouds, a survey of common volumetric capture systems, and a media profile for distribution using Video-based Point Cloud Compression (V-PCC) with HEVC. Version 1.0 added security recommendations.

Publications

VRIF participants wrote two papers on the forum's work for the SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal:

Title	Authors	Issue	Topic
"Virtual Reality Industry Forum's View on State of the Immersive Media Industry"	Ozgur Oyman, Rob Koenen, Paul Higgs, Chris Johns, Richard Mills, Mick O'Doherty	Vol. 128, no. 8, September 2019	Guidelines 1.0, the planned 2.0 features and the 2019 roadmap
"VRIF Guidelines on Live VR Services"	Ozgur Oyman, Mauricio Aracena, Tom De Koninck, Igor D. D. Curcio, Thierry Fautier, Mick O'Doherty	Vol. 129, no. 8, September 2020	Live VR, HDR, text and fonts, and theatrical VR watermarking in Guidelines 2.2

Organization and membership

VRIF was incorporated as VR Industry Forum, Inc., with a mailing address in Fremont, California. Membership was open to any party that supported its purpose. The forum drew members from film, television, broadcast, mobile and interactive gaming, including content creators, distributors, consumer electronics makers, professional equipment makers and technology companies. It had three membership classes. Charter membership was for companies that wanted the most influence over the forum's direction, and Charter members could stand for the board; Contributor membership was for organizations without the resources for board work; Associate membership was for companies with annual revenues under US$10 million, academic institutions and non-profit organizations. Work was organized in working groups, including Communications, Guidelines, Liaison and Requirements working groups.

The forum said it differed from groups such as the VR/AR Association, the VR Society and the Immersive Technology Alliance because it took an end-to-end view, from creative storytelling to consumption, rather than focusing on one sector such as gaming or head-mounted displays. Its scope was audiovisual content for head-mounted devices, though it noted such content could also be viewed on flat screens such as phones, tablets and TVs, and it said it would monitor technologies for augmented and mixed reality.

See also

• 360 Video
• Volumetric video
• XR Association
• Khronos Group