RP1 has been trying to make the metaverse happen for a while. It was touting its tech for bringing a lot of people into a digital space in 2022, and it’s still trying hard to make it happen today.
And this time, RP1 CEO Sean Mann believes that the world needs a metaverse browser. And he and his cofounder Dean Abramson touted the idea at the Augmented World Expo 2025 show this week in Long Beach, California. Back in 2021, they showed me tech that could bring thousands of people together in an online space at the same time.
“It’s funny how things start and how things come back around, and just how things evolve,” Mann said in an interview with GamesBeat. “Obviously, companies like Netflix started off as a company that just got you DVDs in the mail. And the they figured the future is going to be a little bit different, and they pivoted using the same ideas, but created something obviously revolutionary as far as how to deliver video.”
He added, “When we started with you, it was a game changing scaling technology, which is still a very important piece of what we’re doing. But as we’re building out the components and depth and building out the demo and building out a lot of things we really figured out that we’re actually building the first metaverse browser, and the importance of that was obviously for the on demand aspects, not a pre-compiled application that you have to download through a traditional App Store.”
I asked Mann what he meant by a metaverse browser. He said it was mirrored in how Google Chrome works. If you had a metaverse server with assets and services, then the browser’s job is to connect the population with those assets and services, along audio and six degrees of freedom controllers that help you navigate a 3D Chrome space, if you will, Mann said.
The metaverse browser is the collection of technologies for accessing the metaverse, the universe of virtual worlds that are all interconnected, like in novels such as Snow Crash and Ready Player One. The metaverse browser gets you wherever you want to go in the metaverse, just like a web browser gets you anywhere on the web.
“The goal that is not just connecting an unlimited amount of virtual world, but also solving for the augmented reality (AR) future. If you’re if you’re walking around with AR glasses, you’re going to need a seamless map, so as you walk around on proximity, as you’re walking near a hotel, you can instantly interact with their service that they build on their own servers.”
He said the reason why this is super important is that there’s probably one of the biggest migrations of software that’s going to be happening where everyone’s going to be moving from web infrastructure to spatial infrastructure. Indeed, folks like Tony Parisi called the metaverse the “spatial web.”
In Mann’s vision of the metaverse, it’s not just about games like Fortnite, Roblox and Minecraft — which some say is a reasonably good idea of the metaverse. Rather, it’s also just how companies will operate.
“And so if you think of just like a Costco or a Home Depot, instead of you staring at a screen, a little manager in a little screen or something, they’re going to be able to manage the entire business, their warehouses,” he said. “More importantly, they can interact with their customers, but also give the ability for when you walk into Costco with your AR glasses, you will just connect to a third party service built by them. They run on their own servers, and they’ll reach you, whether it’s an AI or a person where the nails are at Home Depot.”
All of this won’t run inside a proprietary virtual world like Roblox or, like in the old days, AOL or Compuserve. It’s going to run in the open metaverse, he said.
“It’s just like how web infrastructure runs on the open World Wide Web,” he said. “The Internet is viewed through a web browser. That’s how we’re defining the metaverse. It’s what you see of the spatial internet as viewed through a metaverse browser.”
Mann believes the metaverse shold also be open, like the open web. It will be an open ecosystem, not a closed one. The browser’s job is to render the world. We’ll expect to see a number of competing web browsers. RP1 wants to create one itself.
closed ecosystem, but doesn’t resemble the openness of the World Wide Web. And so the premises is that you can build on your own servers, and the job is the browser. There’s actually an extra component that makes it a little bit more complicated. Is you have the browser, which its sole job is to render the world, and we see that there can be many competing browsers that use different gaming engines to do that heavy lifting. The middle part that the browser’s job is to connect to is a spatial fabric. And the spatial fabric would be a map system, along with some other services that the spatial fabric wants to provide. And we are a we are both right now, we are a browser in a browser, just because of the company’s size and what we can do. We built basically a browser inside a browser, so you’re gonna be able to go through a meta quest browser to get to our browser, similar to the demo you did a lot a while back, but now it’s way different as far as the feature sets and the standalone aspect. At some point, we do want to build a native browser, just like Chrome is installed, and that’s going to up level the graphics. That will because once you get to the native resources and whatnot, you’ll be able to do a lot more, and we’ll get closer and closer to Unreal level graphics. But right now, we’re restricted with web XR, as you know, is kind of restricted on the graphical level, but the whole premise is really to introduce the idea of a spatial fabric. We happen to be the first in defining these terms, just just how the first web browser defined, you know, open standards, and kind of how things need to come together. And eventually the community came together to continue to evolve those standards. We just happen to be the first to really think the importance of this step. And so our spatial fabric consists of an unlimited map, and we do have a patent for it that allows it to be fully contiguous and persistent. So that means anywhere you teleport or anywhere you go, you can run there, walk there, teleport there, but it’s all fully connected. It’s not like you’re going from one snow globe to another, and it includes our entire universe and one to one scale of our solar system and earth. And the importance of Earth is that, you know, if you own the louver museum in Paris, you need to go have access to that same coordinate system to upload or run your own digital twins, your own services on how you want people to interact with your space. But if you want to build an MMO, or something that has nothing to do with a digital twin, that would be outside of our solar system, where, if Disneyland wanted to build their own planet, that’s not, you know, that’s like Avatar the movie, or a place far, far away, you’re able to do that and stuff, but, but let’s get you inside. I think it’s, I think once you experience it, you’ll probably have more questions. So maybe it’s best that we get you in the world. Do you have your quest three available?
Sorry, I forgot, I forgot about that part.
Go hunt down my crest three.
I promise you, it’ll definitely be worth your time. I mean, it’s gonna be, it’s pretty spectacular.
Okay, hang on a second. Okay? I
way too many Dean right now,
early last
week, how’s Samantha doing? My Way? How’s Samantha
doing? Was she down here? You right, sleeping in there. She was
actually at the front door. When I came in, she was blocking it. I had to, kind of like i.
Yeah, that’s what I love about Dean. Is not you Dean. He is so smart. He just picks that he doesn’t know like as you give him like subject matter. It just, he just gets it like he asked, like him all the right
questions, may Chris, we is not charged.
Okay? I think I don’t know, I might have to bypass this part of it for now. Okay,
yeah, it’s dead, okay. Well, if you
want, we can have, like, a short discussion, because I want to take up too much time. And maybe, if you hopefully, you have some time, we can get you in there. Once you get a charge. Did you have your controllers as well? Or
you have to find those? I gotta get this.
Okay, I do promise, once you have it, it takes, like, it’s very easy to get in. There’s no installations or anything, really, just go to
that’s charging. Okay, sorry about that.
No, that’s okay. So we have, we have two different demos. And both, both demos are, one is an AR demo, and using the pass through of the occus Three. And the neat thing is, we have, so there’s three components that we’ve solved. One is, is we have the scale to connect the world population that is still on the table. We are, we have 30 computers that can handle upwards of about 100,000 concurrent users, all in a single, uncharted space, and all we have to do is just add more computers to get to more users. And when it’s Uncharted, it doesn’t matter what computer you’re on. If we’re talking I could be on a separate server, we’ll still be able to see each other interact. And it’s absolutely fully Uncharted, which is a complete opposite of the gaming technologies that you’re familiar with.
Did you guys have that same goal of like getting 1000s of people into the same space, or is that a is that a different technology?
Or no, we can still do that. It’s really up to the device and what it can handle. So we can have 100,000 people in a single shard, and you can go handshake all 100,000 people. Now, if you’re on a mobile device, you might be able to render the closest 30 people with fidelity and everything, and everyone else could be procedurally generated. And as you move they’ll convert to a real person, but everyone is completely live. And so there’s not one person when you come in as an avatar, there’s not one person that you can’t connect with or talk to and share your data with at all times, no matter where you’re at in the map, or any 24/7 so there’s no there’s just zero sharding as far as the way the system is built. And so the premise that, which is super important, because if I come into a Costco, or I go into an MMO or this, I don’t have to worry about what shard you’re on, we’re instantly just connected based on proximity of where that game or experience, or, you know, education, whatever that looks like, is happening. And so so the right now, we’re capable of 100,000 concurrent users with full six top and full spatial audio. You can come in on a mobile device, desktop and also VR. So Dean could be in, you know, on a mobile phone, you can be on just a desktop browser, and I could be in VR walls, see each other and interact. And then we can go to any location or fly. The neat thing is, what you’ll experience is that we, you can go on planet Earth. We have a whole bunch of, you know, special places. But the second component, obviously, is the unlimited map, which we told you, and then the third is to enable people to build third party services. And this is really important, because this is what creates the likeness of the World Wide Web. Is if you want to build an NPC company, let’s say you’re in world. In World would just use our real time API, and it will now be able to be found anywhere in any location. So if you build, you know, Dean store of selling stuff, well, you know, let’s say magazines. But I go to your location, you’re gonna be like, well, I want people to be greeted, so I’m gonna go get in worlds, plug in and have that show up in world. And I need a payment, so I’m going to grab Venmo or Paypal or whatever payment is built by anyone in the world and drop it in world. And if I go near your space, I will instantly connect to your services that you provide, whether that are yours or third party, and it instantly works. And so inside our demo, we have a couple samples of those services that are not running on the browser. They’re just being connected based on your proximity. So let’s say we do a watch party. We actually have a movie running in demo. As soon as you walk near it, it just connects to you, and you’re running off of a third party service to make that movie possible. We also have a light switch that you can control. You can actually control someone’s light in the UK, inside VR and AR, and you can toggle that. And the importance is, we’re showing that eventually, when you’re wearing AR glasses, you’ll just have a service that’s running by any company that you want to connect with and instantly use it without having to install one thing. It is all real time, just like websites are real time. So you’re basically, when you go to these locations, you’re just connecting to one or many services built by that location or a third party that you interact with, and we can demo that today. So you’ll come in, you’ll be able to control the light. You’ll see me controlling light. You can control the light. We’ll see the same movie. And then we can also control a spaceship that goes up and down, and turn the volume on. And that’s all running off of separate services that are not hard coded into the browser.
And do you guys have. People trying this out, like, is it starting to populate at all? Or
we are literally. So when I told you, you are leading us, okay, it is completely going live. And so on your ninth we’re gonna have a global press release that’s going
out. So if I created Dean shop, I’d be the only one on the metaverse. So you’re
not gonna be able to create a space immediately. It is just a just a showcase. In about three months, post a, W, E, you’re gonna be able to build your own Dean Metaverse server, and people can show up there anytime, 24/7, and interact with whatever, you know, assets that you want to build the real time services gonna take a little time. We’re still, you know, five, six, programmer company
less than it’s funny. Do you know those guys at the convey at all? So I just
got introduced to the CEO. So it’s a little premature, but we got to bring
them in after when I was at GDC, they scanned me at their headquarters, and so I think they’re working on my avatar.
Yeah, but, but the thing we’re trying to showcase is technologies that most companies, right say, almost all companies think is impossible. And they’re not thinking about a single metaverse. They’re thinking about a federated metaverse. So it’s kind of like, hey, let’s move assets from Fortnite to Roblox, and hope that’s it’s like, Hey, can I move from AOL to CompuServe? You know, it sounds great, but it’s a very poor experience where we’re actually creating the foundation where everyone can start building their own website, and it’s all seamless once you connect to the browser. And so it’s just a very different path than what everyone is thinking, and just because they think a lot of the pieces of technology are not possible, and it’s a really hard show COVID,
it’s kind of like ironic how we first started talking, where you said that your website, right? Dean speed is going to break off from Venture be so you’re in charge of that. You own your own website, right? It’s not easy to build a commercial website, but you’re not going to run your website out of Google, right? Or Facebook, right? Facebook would be the equivalent of Roblox, and so you’re not going to run your business by going to Facebook and trying to build within the tools that they give you. You’re building your own website with your own servers and your own resources and services, and you’re hosting it. And that’s what we’re that’s that’s the paradigm that we’re trying to bring to the to the world, is when we’re talking about building the metaverse, you will literally set up your own Metaverse resources on your own servers. And the browser will come and pick it up, and we’ll incorporate that into our world based on the map that we have set up so that companies like Costco or Home Depot or Walmart or Starbucks or anywhere you might go, hotel places, they will all have their own internet, excuse me, their own Metaverse infrastructure. It’s like you’re building your own new website. They’re gonna build their own websites, their own Metaverse Metaverse sites and Metaverse infrastructure. They’ll host it in the in the browser, will come and pick it
up. Is it kind of like that analogy of, you know, I would build my house out on the the internet, but Disney would build Disneyland, their big site, and they would have like, you know, you know, Mickey Mouse land, or Tomorrowland, or whatever it is, all these things inside it. I guess
Disneyland will have two ways for the browser to impact their business. Well, what? More than two, but two main ways, so they can take their physical, you know, like in LA, you know, outside la go to Anaheim, there’s actually a coordinate system of the actual did plan. They will build a digital twin. They will, they will run that off their servers. And so when someone goes in the browser, rd one browser, and goes to that location inside our one to one scale of Earth, they will connect to Disneyland servers, and everything will be uploaded, assets and services based on how Disney wants to present that experience. More importantly, if you’re actually at Disneyland, eventually, with AR glasses, you’ll be able to connect to those same services. So there’s a service that greets you in AI or helps you find a ride. It will know where you’re standing. And the cool thing is, someone in VR can show up in your AR glasses and share that in real life experience, because the browser is connecting everyone, whether you’re remote or actually in real life. And so the browser’s job is to be you know that the whole idea of the original term of the metaverse was a persistent ecosystem where whether you’re in the real world or in virtual worlds, you’re connecting the world population to seamlessly move in through these different experiences. And we’re basically demonstrating these, these, these technologies to make that vision. There’s a third
way that Disney is going to use technology, which is they’re going to build a galaxy far, far away in virtual land, is purely for entertainment and gaming, and you will be able to participate as a Mandalorian style character in their VR world. Their movies will now just be to our little advertisements for Disney’s Metaverse world, and you’ll put on your VR headset. You’ll go off to some planet in their galaxy that they have set up, and you can just go explore and be. Part of their world. So there’s the real aspect of it, right? There’s the AR aspect of it that’s really going to impact the way that we as humans live our life on the planet. And then there’s the the imaginary aspect of it, which will impact how we play in the VR world. So how do
you deal with some people who are using some kind of proprietary approach, but maybe want to be connected to the metaverse like I think the one way that epic was describing what they were doing with Disney was Disney was going to create its own universe using epic tools. And it was going to be something that could connect into Fortnite, which was, you know, Epic’s place. And then Fortnite was going to be part of this open Metaverse, really, that was going to, you know, sort of be connected to everything, right? So, like, there’s different ways to, like, that, that interface, or that connection point between these
worlds is so I think the challenge that you have, just from a conversational standpoint about the idea of the metaverse, is federated versus single, right? And I think the Fortnite is, you know, I think their deal with Disney, obviously the IP was a big deal, because you can see the IP already showing up in some of their maps and whatnot. But I think the premise of how they’re using the term Metaverse is really specific to building games that you can move assets, potentially from one game to another. So use the avatar, which is very important to their business model, because that’s how they make billions of dollars is around the avatar, and the goods around those avatars. And so I think they’re building their own AOL, if you will, because it’s not an ecosystem where I can build my own tools, or I can add different things into Fortnite. And so the premise of the World Wide Web is that anyone can build components. They can become the WordPress. They can build the assets. There’s not one owner of all these different components. And so I think the challenge that we have is the first company to build a Metaverse browser, we’re going to look like a just another potential meta, but our goal is that other people can build a browser, other people can build spatial fabrics. So we’re actually building the standards, and we’re actually working with the metaverse standard forum, Neil for vet, to really showcase that this is a path towards a single Metaverse versus a federated one, which is just a whole bunch of standalone wall gardens trying to agree on some type of file types, or use blockchain to move from one place to another. So when you come to our world that we met RP, one does not own your assets. Does not own your location. We just provide a map system and the ability for people to connect to your content, no different than Chrome, gives you a ability to find your website and view it anywhere in the world. And so it creates a very so anyone can become like the WordPress RP one. They can build avatar systems. They can build components programmability, the whole bit, including everyone can build their own browser and build their own spatial fabrics. We just happen to be the first, and I’m assuming at some point we’re going to get companies that will join us in formulating a lot of these standards together, and we will just be one component in a much bigger
picture. Did you guys already join some of those groups, like the metaverse standards forum, etc?
Yeah, we’re a member. Okay. We
actually just, I just had a meeting with our group, and we just brought in a lot of people into the demo for private showing and
everything. Are they? Are they close to having some set of rules for everybody like
so the challenge that I have, and it’s not a negative one, and you know, this is off the record, Metaverse, standard form, doesn’t want to define the term Metaverse, because it would exclude a lot of people. So if you’re like, hey, we define it as a single ecosystem, we all start building components to make it possible that would exclude probably 90% of the people that are actually joining there. So they purposely don’t define the term Metaverse, which is a problem in itself, because without a definition, how do you build towards it, right? And so I think RP one has quite an opportunity, because I think we are the first visionaries that are thinking about a single Metaverse, and along with the pieces and components, and as you do a little bit deeper dive in what we’re doing, we define spatial fabrics. Anyone can build these components. We just happen to have one that might be more scalable. But we believe that Google will build their own spatial fabric. Apple will build their own spatial fabric. And the job of the browser is to connect you to where. What spatial fabric Do you want to go to and make it seamless for your avatar to interact with people all over the world based on the same standards. And so it’s going to, you know, just like the first web browser, you didn’t have open standards, and all the pieces defined right away, HTML, early days was HTML, and eventually, you know, it kind of grew into a much more powerful tool. But the current web browser is not designed for the things that we’re touting, and that’s why we had to showcase it in this global demo that we’re sharing.
It should be enough. And if you
what I do is I just leave it plugged in. So if you look at me, I just leave it plugged in and have the cord my lap. You just pop on your
head. I got it. I. To find my controllers, which I also vote nowhere there. They’re somewhere in my garage here.
You. Yes, I think I claim to you, so games beat is completely spun off, you know, so Dean took ownership of it with his partner, and which is, as all the transitions all happening now, which is pretty exciting, he’s been there, what, three years, or something crazy.
How was the Friendship? Friendship was delicious.
The one disappointment was the banana cream pie. I think was a good day. They changed up their vendor, not anywhere close, but as good as the other one.
The next pizza I make is gonna be like the French ship pizza. I do it with roast beef and horse rush.
So I have a place for you to go. That sounds funny. I have a place for you to go to try a pizza so that you can have a little bit more guidance in mastering your your craft. It’s called pizza, Z, s, e, i, or something like that. It’s a little bit of hike for you, so you have to be a little venturous. But it’s over on that because
Dean,
do you don’t you
don’t live in Randall right. Do you
okay? Yeah,
but the game fee headquarters is gonna be in Randall right.
We don’t have a physical address. We’ve got, I’m in the Bay Area. So is our CEO, but otherwise we’re, you know, we’re just working out of our homes.
Yeah, no, I saw, I saw an address, but that might be just the old address.
Oh, yeah, there’s, like, a mailing address, just if people want to send us stuff so he wants to sue us, or something like, but, yeah, it’s like, it’s, I think, a virtual address, like, you know, just sort of alerts us when somebody says something or something, all right, I think what I been charging is my, my vision Pro. So
the only problem with the vision Pro, you can get in but the the web XR is disabled for a lot of the stuff within the vision Pro, and also they don’t have controllers to move around. So the vision Pro is not going to be a good way to demo. So good. See,
I have both my you know, they’re just not so great at labeling stuff, but
it’s not nearly as good as VR.
Let’s see if this will turn on
the one they’ve charged more.
Yeah, I can’t believe. I can’t wait to show you what Chris saw, because Chris, Chris got it right. Like he’s just, he was just couldn’t stop gushing as I took him all over, like when he went from earth to space, and he literally flew straight up into the sky and and all said is in space, looking at Earth rotate. He was just like, and then the services he was he, I think he got the whole picture. I’m definitely excited for you
to which, uh, Christian, uh, melanious, oh, melisinos, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah. No, he’s, uh, yeah. I’m glad he’s he has his stuff charged all the time.
Well, we actually wrote, we actually did a video that shows, why have they collect dust? It’s because that, you know, it’s funny. You know, we hear the one question, and we’re gonna probably address this in our talk at awe. It will tell me one killer use case. And I’m like, that’s like, asking, what is a killer use case for the World Wide Web? Like, there’s a million different websites and ways that you’re going to want to share data and information with people, and boom. And the answer is the same. With the metaverse, there’s a million different ways, whether it’s gaming or education or going to a digital twin of a university or classroom. Like it’s endless. Just tell me the company or the industry, and we’ll tell you 100 different ways that there it’s gonna change their lives. And
so yes, sir, I gotta, I gotta hunt down more stuff here. I think I
maybe you.
They were Tired.
So we’ve had one person from outside of our company. Great
account. Oh, well, I think I’m gonna have to take a rain check and go find my stuff and gather it and get it fencing. Just
tell me when you’re free and we’ll make it happen. Okay.
Can you tell me? Email you the link? Yeah, okay. and we’ll we’ll make it happen. Okay. But yeah, meta quest. wait, Wait. Yeah i. a meta question. I did a major I did a major cleanup, where I at least now have all these things in boxes. But then now, the problem is, I don’t know where I put everything, so, oh well, they’re labeled, at least in some way. But yeah, even if you, let’s say you charge your request three and you’ve got it with the minimum battery power. The first time you turn it on, after like, a couple months of non use, it’s gonna take you half an hour to go through all this. Oh, wait, we’re gonna get your email address. Yeah. Now we need your daughters. But Sean, you mentioned the video that I could watch is that I don’t see it in our email. There is a there’s a video. Oh. RP, one.com, forward slash, learn that just us talking. It’s not showing in showing why the industry needs to go towards the open Metaverse and why they’re not selling because right now, just to give you an idea, VR headsets are really just gaming consoles, and so you’re gonna be very limited on that use case, just because it’s like competing with, like, the numbers of Xbox or whatnot. Also, no one’s thinking about the idea of air glasses and the impact that will have with VR as well. There’s this guest login. Does that take me to see anything? Or not yet, or so you would, you would just give me a heads up, and I’ll set it up for you where we just go in so I can take you on a tour. So you need but I want to go with the headset, though, like, yeah, yeah, okay. You could literally just text me and if I’m just, if I’m home, which I’m home most often, doesn’t matter if it’s evening, late or it doesn’t have to be formalized, just text me and I say, let’s jump in. And so it’s your you can go in on your phone and you going on desktop right now. It’s open. It’s not password protected anymore, but the experience in VR is way better. Just you have this, you have this, you know, 360, view and and you’re not limited to, like, looking at a certain forestry industry and just the movement. And you’re going to want to fly into space and get the feeling of what it’s like to be hanging out. It’s very different. Let’s do this. If we have a little bit little more while, why don’t we just, he’ll go on desktop, and I’ll go in VR thing, and then later on, you go on VR. Because if we if he’s not able to find his stuff in time, I want him to still experience it and all, you’re just gonna Dean, do you want to put in a meeting code for him? Yeah, I did. He’s a meeting code. But I have to start it. So let me go online and I’ll start it while you take the meeting to it out. Sean, I don’t have it because you just told me verbally. I just put it in. Slap. Okay? If you could email that to me, I’m gonna switch over to my desktop. I’m on my laptop here. So email of the code, or whatever the link is, sure. So what’s your let me tell you what to do, though, you’re gonna go to actually here. I said, the link. I got email sent to you. It’s just like a zoom link. You’ll be able to go in just by going to rpo.com and hitting Enter, there’s going in world, but this is a specific way for you to enter, like a zoom, like meeting, which will also be a cure for the browser. So we’ll see you inside.
I started his face. Sean, you want me to start
as a guest? Is perfect. Yep.