March 2017 saw Pagani Automobili deliver the Pagani Huayra Roadster to market, with a public launch at the 87th Geneva Motor Show. As a revered luxury brand within the automotive sector, Pagani draws the attention of motor enthusiasts worldwide. To maximise the overall reach of the vehicle's debut, ZeroLight and Pagani collaborated on an online launch event to coincide with the reveal at the show, running alongside the duration of the cars display. This also marked the first time a vehicle had been launched concurrently using real-time 3D visualisation over the web.
The Proposition
Fans and customers alike accessed an independent site dedicated to the Huayra Roadster, revealing a countdown until the cars reveal at the motor show. Once the countdown completed, the site became accessible, providing visitors with access to ZeroLight's award-winning, cloud powered automotive visualisation platform. This allowed the delivery of a high fidelity, 3D digital representation of the Huayra Roadster in real-time to any connected device. Users could fully configure and explore the vehicle from any angle, including inside the car, whilst opening the doors, engine bay and bonnet. Utilising proprietary textures and lighting to provide a stunning brand proposition, the car was set in Pagani's Modena showroom, allowing not only access to one of the rarest vehicles on the planet, but also the facility it's displayed in.
To maximise the potential for viral behaviour, visitors were given the ability to generate content, including beauty shots and videos, which could be shared directly from the page to social media sites. Such assets were responsive to the visitor's preferences when using the configurator, changing in real-time with every configuration made. Each asset had sharing options available, so visitors could upload their preference to social media platforms. A personal video provided a dynamic 360 of the vehicle, moving in on select features whilst animations were triggered. Each shared asset linked back to the site so that those who viewed and admired others' creations could then design their own.
Lowering Barriers to Entry whilst Maintaining Quality
With all processing carried out in the cloud, users could interact with a multi-million polygon representation of the Huayra Roadster in 3D, regardless of the capabilities of their hardware. To make the experience truly global, the ZeroLight-Pagani initiative had to deliver a high-quality experience regardless of existing geographical infrastructure. Such infrastructure may limit bandwidth, making access to a high-quality stream difficult. To this end, ZeroLight deployed it's 2D web solution as a backup for those dependent on aging networks and unable to access a 3D stream. It works by utilising a 3D instance for customisation before generating one 720p image every 10 degrees in real-time, delivering a full 360° experience, catered to the customer's preferences. Each time a change is made or an animation is triggered, a new full 360° is deployed in seconds to provide a seamless, high-quality experience. This ensures all users can dictate their preferences whilst saving the brand a large-scale investment on an outdated and costly image bank. Both 3D and 2D web experiences are delivered in seconds, remaining in line with modern customer expectations. Efficiencies were implemented by utilising a timer for 3D streams, switching to 2D web automatically on detection of timed inactivity. This managed overall cost and 3D instance availability, ensuring 3D instances were available as soon as possible for active users.
