Re: [dispatch] Proposal to add 'haptics' as a new top-level media type - Comments welcome [Was RE: draft-muthusamy-dispatch-haptics-00.txt]

[Yeshwant Muthusamy <[e-mail]>]

Dale,

Thanks for the comments. Please see my responses below, prefaced by '[YKM]'.

Regards,
Yeshwant

Yeshwant Muthusamy, Ph.D. | Senior Director, Standards

[e-mail] | [phone]

-----Original Message-----
From: Dale R. Worley <[e-mail]> 
Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 2020 8:30 PM
To: Yeshwant Muthusamy <[e-mail]>
Cc: [e-mail]; Chris Ullrich <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: [dispatch] Proposal to add 'haptics' as a new top-level media type - Comments welcome [Was RE: draft-muthusamy-dispatch-haptics-00.txt]

In general, this makes sense.  Reading your proposal quickly, I can see two complications:

One is that in many current usages, haptic data is incorporated into the same media stream as other media, making it questionable whether haptic data would be in a stream that could be labeled as such.  I notice that combined video/audio seems to be common, so this problem is probably already being solved in that case.
[[YKM]] 'haptics' has been proposed as a first-order media type in the ISOBMFF standard (ISO/IEC 14496-12), at the same level as 'audio' and 'video', so we could indeed have .mp4 files that just have haptic tracks in them. The ISBOMFF Amendment containing our proposal is expected to issue in October 2021 (the January 2022 date in the I-D is an error that will be fixed in the next revision). Bullet #1 in Section 2.1 talks of 'haptics/mp4' files containing just haptics tracks, likely useful for streaming games, haptic files for haptic vests, belts, suits, etc.

Another is that it seems like few of these media formats are non-secret.  There are registrations of media formats that are patent-encumbered, but the specifics of those formats can be documented.  What would really encourage support for a haptics data type is one or more open standards.
[[YKM]] As we mention in Section 2.5 (Haptic Subtypes (in use)), several haptic subtypes like haptics/ahap, haptics/ogg, haptics/ivt are already widely in use, in millions of devices around the world. It is my understanding that we cannot really register a haptics/ahap or haptics/ivt format until the top-level media type ('haptics')  is accepted and registered. Given the standardization progress in MPEG, it seems most logical to use the Standards Track RFC route to get 'haptics' registered as a top-level type first.

I would probably be informative to prepare draft IANA registrations of the haptics type and two or three subtypes and see how writing up the registrations works out in practice.
[[YKM]] I am not sure what you mean by 'draft IANA registrations'. The IANA registration website does not have a provision to specify a new top-level media type. You have to choose from a fixed drop-down list of currently approved top-level types in order to register a new subtype. Given that 'haptics' is not part of the top-level media type list yet, I do not see how I can proceed with a 'draft' registration for any of the subtypes of interest. Am I missing something?

Dale