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Back here in Vegas, we now have Alan Smithson from MetaVRse with us.

How's it going guys?

Tell us a little bit about your technology and what you're all about.

Sure. My name is Alan Smithson and I'm a Co Founder of MetaVRse, and I know it's a hot topic right now. MetaVRse, we spelled it M-E-T-A-V-R-S-E. And it's a game engine on the web. So think of it like a creation platform for creating the future of the metaverse whether it be virtual LANs, or experiences. We focus the last five years on building solutions for enterprise. So in doing that we've built you know, training simulators in 3D for medical device manufacturers.

Okay.

We've done sales and marketing training for a large consumer electronics manufacturer that's here. So it's been a wonderful experience doing all of these different things. And we're about to launch a Virtual Mall. So very similar, like Decentraland, or Sandbox, but it's a mall, and in much nicer graphics. So instead of being blocky graphics, it looks like the products you're looking at. So

Wild. Now what kind of I don't want you to get into proprietary things, but that is some really advanced technology that you're leveraging. How do you go about doing that? And like you said, you're having a virtual mall. Is this something that's along the line of Second Life or something like that?

Exactly. So there it is.

Face it this way.

I can't show it just yet.

Okay.

Sorry, guys, I wanted to show you and get your reaction here.

All right.

So I've got my avatar. I can walk around the store. When I go into a store, I go into first person. Now I can interact with the products. And so now, it's good, right?

That is really cool. Yeah. And

It works on any device on the browser from anywhere in the world.

Wow. So you don't have to download a proprietary app. You don't need any proprietary hardware like goggles, nothing like that. Now, how have it cuz obviously, this is, I guess, for business to customer use, you know. To be able to provide a virtual means by which to even do things like this?

This works on your phone, your computer, your be. Whatever you open it on, it's a browser. Well. We're definitely gonna have a CES floor, obviously, it's gonna be in its 24/7. It's global. So the world of CES, we're gonna bring into the virtual mall for sure. We're gonna have a floor from CES.

That is really, really interesting leveraging of that. Now, how long have you guys been around working on this concept?

So that's a great question. We actually registered the company name MetaVRse in 2016. We were working on it since 2015. And the technology itself has been being built for years now. And last year, in 2020, during the pandemic, in June, we launched the game engine out to the, to the world. And with all its bugs, and all its you know, it's fun stuff.

Sure.

And we landed all these big clients. And then we started working with these clients, we realized that it wasn't enterprise-grade enough to solve problems like, you know, I want to host it on-premises.

Sure.

We have a company in Germany, and the data can't leave Germany, these types of things. So in kind of learning all that from direct customer solutions, we ended up deciding to rebuild the entire infrastructure from the ground up. So we took the rendering technology out of the old one, put it in a new one, and we rebuilt everything from scratch. So 2.0 will be launching this year as well, in addition. The mall is just our way of saying here's what you can do.

Sure, sure. Yeah, just an initial offering of what can be done because of course.

Because it's endless.

Yeah, yeah. And I work in the world of events, live events, all kinds of stuff. And one of the big moves over the last year has been to virtual events, not just, of course, not just Zoom events. That kind of stuff.

Well. Touchcast is doing a huge thing from here this week. And they're focusing on making, you know, live event stages. So you can-

Yes.

Green screen in the speaker from anywhere in the world and look like they're on a multimillion-dollar stage.

Exactly.

And this is beautiful. And so this is the start of all of this. You know, virtual shopping, we figured that we've been doing e-commerce and retail stuff for brands for so long. And we're like. People just want to maybe they want to hang out. They don't want to shoot laser beams or things. They just maybe want to walk around and talk like Second Life was.

Sure, sure. And I guess that my next question was: is there a social aspect with this?

Yes.

Can you interact with others?

Ofcourse. Not only can you interact with the shoppers. So you make your avatar, you can mint your avatars, your own NFT. You know, anything you buy for your avatar, you can put bracelets, watches, clothing, whatever you buy for your avatar that is now yours and it's attached to the avatars NFT. You can sell it on a Secondary market, but it's yours. And then we also selling the land. So the actual, there'll be 1000 floors in the mall. And each brand can have a floor or a part of a floor, and they own it. And there's a distribution of the profits from the whole building to the NFT holders as well. So it's really exciting. And then when you make your avatar, you go into the mall, I can just send you a hyperlink instantly, you click it on your phone, and you're now you're standing next to me with your avatar, and we can walk around the mall. But imagine this, you're in a store, you're walking around with your avatar, you and you just want to ask for some help. Click a little red button. Now the brand can have a real person as an avatar, talk to you, help you and we're bringing the personal shopping experience to the virtual world.

Wow. Wow. That's pretty remarkable. And all of this happens in real time.

Of course, it's all on the device rendered.

Now, as I'm just gonna play the business owner here, how do I get my items into that store? Right? Is it a digital render process like you got to come by with a cab, we send you pictures of our product and you render them out digitally? How does that work?

It depends on the product. And it depends on what you want to get done. So for fashion, for example, we can do volumetric capture. So you know you have somebody who acted out or you know do model. We volumetric capture, you can drop that in. For a product like a car, or an oil consumer product, we would have the CAD models. We would convert them to, you know, animated 3Ds. Then bring them in. But we have a studio MetaVRse studio, that we take care of all this for our customers. All you have to tell us is that we want these five products in here, and this is what we want them to do. We take care of everything, all the decor, the building, everything. For the first 100 floors of the mall, we're going to do everything for our customers, because the tool is not been out in the market and long enough that there's enough experts on it yet.

Wow. Now, what is the entry point for this as far as a vendor? And as far as a user?

Sure, from a dollar standpoint.

Well. Both the dollar standpoint and technology-wise.

Okay. So from a technology standpoint. You just need a browser.

Okay.

On any device, there's no technology required to do anything.

Just like a website that you visit.

Exactly. And then if you go to metavrse.com/getstarted. You can actually start building anything on our engine. We have a full hosting engine. You hit publish, and it works instantly on any device. So there's the creation platform. So we make a no code creation platform, that you can build these virtual worlds, but because it's not, you know, it's the, it's still getting taken off. And we're about to launch 2.0 We're doing everything hand holding for our customers. They have everything at their fingertips.

Wow. Wow. And what is the price point for entry for a client.

So the entry for let's say, a brand, we have 5,000 , 10,000, 50,000 square foot. 50,000 is a whole floor and 5,000 is smaller.

Sure.

They start at hundred grand for the first year investments with seventy grand upfront hundred grand and that goes up to half a million. It's fully built. So it's not like you're buying a piece of land and you got to do something with it. You're buying it, and then we develop it for you. But you can sell it afterwards if you want but.

Sure.

I wouldn't if the brand-

Well. And you know if you're looking at any kind of physical marketplace, something like that. That is an absolutely reasonable app, especially whenever you're considering the programming that goes into it all together servers is a part of it.

There's four billion compatible devices that can access it from anywhere in the world instantly. So your market, instead of like, because we modeled it after the pricing after a mall.

Exactly.

A mall says. Okay, within a three hour drive of the mall, we have this catch basin. Well, our catch basin is the planet.

Yeah, precisely. Yeah. So what are you looking for next for this? What's the next step?

Sure. The next step for this is making it work on all the head-worn devices. So down the road right now, I was working on mobile, you know, all 2D screens. The next thing people may want to do is go in VR and meet up with their friends, but it has to be interportable. So for example, if a brand is going to use 3D assets on their e-commerce site, for example, the assets have to be interoperable with ours. So if you want to bring, you know, your car into Roblox or into Decentraland, or Sandbox. You can't. It's incompatible. So what we're trying to do right now, we just joined the Khronos Group. And they're the global industry standards for 3D. Yeah. So we're just standardize everything so that our brands know that everything works. And from a consumer standpoint, you just get a QR link or QR code or a URL. Click a button, you land in the mall, you make your avatar. Wow, the avatar is free to make. But if you mint it, it's $25 to mint your avatar.

Not bad.

But we're giving away the first couple 100,000 for free, so.

Really, really cool. Wow. Well tell everybody where they can go to take part in MetaVRse. Where they can go to start shopping right now in the new and new digital world?

We actually have a demo online on our main page. You can go and try it right now. It's metavrse.com M-E-T-A-V-R-S-E.COM.

Great. Well Alan. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much my friend.

That's really cool.

We'll give you one of those.

Absolute

CES 2022 has been magical.

It has been. It's really great to be back in person. It's been great to see all the technology here, as well as what's virtually available online.

So, honestly, it feels like the start of something again, remember.

Yeah.

You know, what, CES 20 years ago was small and

Yeah.

And it feels like that energy is here again. So I'm really looking forward to CES in 23. It's going to be booming.

Same Same. Absolutely.

Thank you, Chris.

Thank you so much for your time.

So thank you for the opportunity

Today during. Well. A relaunched CES 2022

It's so great. Look at how many people are. Amazing.

Yeah.

Awesome. Thank you, Chris.

You bet.

Have a great day.

TPN CES 2022 coverage is executive produced by Michele Mendez. Technical Directors are Kurt Corless and Adam Barker. Associate producers are Nancy Ertz and Maurice McCoy. Interviews are edited by Jo Mini. Hosts are Marlo Anderson, Todd Cochrane, Scott Ertz, Christopher Jordan, Daniele Mendez, and Allante Sparks. Las Vegas studio provided by HC Productions. Remote studio provided by PLUGHITZ Productions. This has been Tech Podcasts Network Production, copyright 2022.