The Hot & Techy Virtual Test-drive

client

Maruti Suzuki, Communique Marketing

solution

Virtual Reality

Together with Maruti and Communique Marketing, we designed a breathtaking virtual reality experience for the launch of one of their most envisaged cars, the Suzuki Brezza.

in 3 days

100 new user joining the launch everyday

test drive experience

100 of Journalists participated in the test drive

virtual test drive experience - 100 oculus devices

Physical and Virtual in Harmony

An unprecedented virtual test drive experience was chalked out for the event attendees maneuvering the potential of Virtual Reality. The catch here was that the virtual launch was done in a physical event space with 100 oculus devices synced together for the virtual test drive launch of their latest car Brezza 2022. This was India’s largest event with 100 virtual devices synced together. There were around 300 attendees who participated in the event.

The Heart of the Experience

The entire virtual reality experience was scrupulously planned to make the user feel that he is sitting inside the car, driving and exploring its new impressive features. To bring an entrancing experience to the table, we made a 3D environment that encompassed creating a futuristic city, which was metropolitan and had the neon fun element as its core. This ultimate experience which was unparalleled with the set 360-degree VR account left the audience awestruck. The 4-minute video played on the device consisted of a 30-second pretext, 1-minute content showcasing the intricacies and features of the car, and the next 2.5 minutes explaining the facelift features including the changing headlights, and sunroof.

Sync Before You Blink

A setup consisting of 100 oculus devices that provided the virtual reality test drive experience in all the devices at once. For this, we made an infrastructure to support streaming on 100 devices simultaneously while they were synced together.

Virtual test drive inside the car Experience

Photorealistic Environment

The environment was made visually enticing to provide an extremely immersive experience to the attendees. Every minute detail of the car like the steering wheel, speedometer displays, and wheel movement was precisely synchronized throughout the user experience. We embarked on a photorealistic pipeline and rendered it in 4k and 8k types. It took us 20,000 hours of rendering as each frame took about 4.5 hours. The file size was about 3 TB, making it challenging to process & manage.

Photorealistic Experience - LED Tail Lamps

The Challenges

The 100 devices were not only to be synced together but the content had to be put in manually in each of them which was very tedious. A prep zone of around 3000 sq ft was to be set up at the event site for 3 days. Also, the battery life of all the VR devices was 1 hour, and had a window of 3 minutes to charge all the devices each time. To combat all the challenges, we built a mesh network to connect all 100 devices and created multiple consoles to operate them all. The controls were optimized by estimating the number of users and syncing all the devices once so that we could perfectly time the audio on all devices with a 100 ms response time. We also ensured that all the attendees look in the same direction for a unified experience. To provide comfort to users, a screen to calibrate 100 people was made with a 30-second time window. A central console was created to charge all 100 VR devices within 3 minutes, and it was repeated for each user experience.

The Out-Turn

The launch happened in 3 phases over the course of 3 days with 100 new users joining the launch every day. The attention span of the users throughout the VR experience was vastly high. 100s of journalists enthusiastically participated in the test drive experience. The virtual test drive experience was perfect for those who were looking to explore the latest features of the Maruti Brezza 2022 in a seamless, immersive, and visually appealing way