Standardized Virtual Reality, Are We There Yet?

Despite its history of several decades and impressive achievements, developing a VR application is still a complex task. Setting-up a virtual environment requires choosing a suitable combination of elements from a large amount of technologies, software frameworks, animation/modeling formats and many other components. In this paper we present an overview of the efforts focused on defining a commonly accepted set of specifications - standards - for the multiple "ingredients" of a VR application. Our analysis of current and previous initiatives provides elements to answer the question about whether or not we can talk about "standard VR"