Mixed and augmented reality (MAR) is on the brink of large-scale consumer level commercialization. For MAR to succeed and proliferate as an information media and new contents platform, standards will be necessary so that MAR system components can easily be plugged in and contents shared and interoperable. The workshop will be an arena to discuss and lay a foundation to many issues of standardization for MAR, including (but not limited to): proper subareas for standards and abstract levels, physical and environment object representation, content file format, standard calibration process, augmentation and display style standards, standards for non-visual and multimodal augmentation, object feature presentation, benchmarking, etc.

Despite its importance, there has been very little discussion of standards for MAR, especially from the academics and research community. It is critical that standards for MAR be developed on a sound basis with input from the academia and research community, for it to be correct, comprehensive, effective and extendible for the future.

Standardization for MAR is being pushed through few organizations, such as the ISO (International Standards Organization), OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) and by grass root organizations such as the Perey Associates. Such movements reflect the recent rise in the interest in AR and the large commercialization efforts. However, there are so many areas to cover and the efforts are still limited by the lack of area experts.