Austella’s latest project was launched last week for Michelin at Goodwood’s Festival of Speed.

In conjunction with L3 Creative Projects, the team created three experiences for Michelin’s technically innovative stand:

• A fully immersive VR ‘Pit Stop Challenge‘ where visitors were able to compete in a tyre-changing contest on a Ginetta G58 in a race against the clock to gain the quickest pit-stop time.

• An interactive AR app which gave visitors the opportunity to try out a selection of Michelin tyres on a variety of vehicles and in different driving conditions.

• A Magic Mirror experience of the Michelin Man who would mimic the movements of nearby visitors.

Pit Stop Challenge

For this experience we required the highest visual fidelity possible, so we chose to use Unreal Engine 4. We were also given the challenge of running the project on the Oculus minimum specs, so to help achieve this we leveraged Unreal’s excellent LOD system, reducing the triangle count by over 50% on certain meshes. In addition, the mesh merging tool was crucial when working with lower detail objects in the background.

Another tool within Unreal Engine which proved invaluable for this project was the level sequencer which allowed for rapid prototyping of level animations and cutscenes. Creating marketing material within the engine allows for real-time updates to be made without the need to re-render material.

AR App

This app required very accurate tracking, so we opted to work with Vuforia using their marker tracking over Apple’s ARKit and SLAM. It also had to be light enough to run on an iPad so naturally Unity was our preferred choice of engine.
This project relied heavily on scriptable objects along with the use of bit masks to pull relevant data onto the UI and also in the in-app email that was sent to the user. The use of scriptable objects made it easier to add new tyre data in the later stages of development.

Magic Mirror

To create the Michelin Man Magic Mirror we opted to use a combination of Unity and a Microsoft Kinect V2.0: working with the Kinect API, taking the tracking points and mapping them on to a skeletal mesh. The result created a fun and engaging interactive experience which captured passing visitors.

At Austella, we produce virtual reality games, virtual tours, product demonstrations and trade show attractions that showcase your brand in an immersive and unique way. To find out more, please get in touch with our team.