Metaverse Showroom Experience
Xiaomi, eine der größten Smartphone-Marken der Welt, bat uns eine brandneue Metaverse-Plattform für den Launch der neuen Redmi Note 11 Serie auf dem deutschen Markt zu entwickeln. Ein virtueller Showroom, der speziell auf die Generation Z zugeschnitten ist. Ein Ort, um die Produkte hautnah in 3D zu erleben, sich zu vernetzen und den ersten Eindruck der neuen Redmi-Handys zu teilen.
Das Ziel
Wir bieten ein gemeinsames Erlebnis in einem coolen und besonderen Raum, um die Markteinführung der Redmi Note 11 Serie vor allem in der post-millennial-Zielgruppe zu beschleunigen. Dabei schaffen wir eine lebendige virtuelle Bühne für die neuen Smartphones. Und transportieren den Launch der neuen Produktlinien ins Metaverse.
Besonderes Erscheinungsbild
Xiaomi wollte seinen potenziellen Kunden einen Raum bieten, in dem sie zusammenkommen, Produkte in allen Einzelheiten, und dennoch auf spielerische Weise, entdecken können - und dabei eine einzigartige Atmosphäre schaffen. Um dies zu ermöglichen, entwickelten wir den Xiaomi Virtual Showroom - ein eigenes Metaverse. Wir haben uns auf einen direkten und einfachen Userflow konzentriert: ohne Registrierungsprozess können die Besucher:innen direkt in den Showroom springen (natürlich nachdem sie Stunden damit verbracht haben, ihrem individuellen Avatar den perfekten Look zu verpassen).
Eine Bühne für besondere Auftritte
Und genau hier fängt alles an: Von der Treppe aus blickt man in den offenen urbanen Raum, der sich über drei Ebenen erstreckt. Im Inneren finden User:innen die vier neuen Smartphones, während im oberen Bereich der neue Smart Air Purifier 4 den Raum frisch hält. Auf der Dachterrasse kann man bei schöner Aussicht feiern und dabei Musik aus den neuen Redmi Buds 3 Lite hören. Damit sich das Erlebnis so realistisch und flüssig wie möglich anfühlt und trotzdem für alle zugänglich ist, haben wir die 3D-Umgebung und Texturen auch für ältere mobile Endgeräte optimiert.
Individually designed environment
In an intensive concept art phase we created a unique 3D environment that allows the participants to immerse themselves in a new world. We wanted to emphasize a clean, playful & vibrant environment designed for genZ audience. This was realized with a simple & layered floorplan, soft shape language and vibrant colors with a palette related to summer weather. We avoided flat and harsh shapes as much as we could by using curved accents and stairs as a path to direct participants through the scene.
It's a wide World
Combined with an urban city environment it was important to make the outside feel like it was just as much involved in the fun as everything else. Neon lights, big signs and vivid skyscrapers helped capture this idea and with a subtle touch of sleek futurism we wanted the stage to feel like an optimistic vision of the future. Therefore we rendered a basic future city in 3D with already complex visual effects like clouds and volumetric fog and let them be overpainted by an illustrator to get the right look and feel of a more stylistic approach.
Perfect 3D product models
Everything you see is hand-crafted. Starting from scratch each of the six products were modeled in 3D based on the real ones and the input of the client. With a keen eye for details from the roundings of the edges to the camera lenses and the material we made sure to reach the necessary quality standard of a correct copy in realtime 3D. In the end the products were carefully integrated into the event space like pieces of a puzzle to guarantee the highest quality in a realtime experience on mobile devices.
Light and shade
To ensure a fully immersive event space it was important for us to bring in state-of-the-art lighting techniques as well. So we baked fully static lighting into the scene - making sure that the shape of the shadows follow the design of the whole space and also highlight the products.
Fresh and clean
We created a sleek User Interface which is inspired by the MI UI. It complements the virtual showroom and brings maximum functionality while keeping the focus on the environment
Finding the right user count
Of course the more avatars we render, the higher the impact on the performance of the device. Since we mainly targeted mobile devices, we derived the performance limit from our most low-spec devices. This way even users of older devices will see an experience as smooth as on a high-powered desktop machine. This approach allowed us to render 35 other avatars in addition to the player's own avatar.
How to make a vivid experience for 12.000 simultaneous users
What has been reality for computer games for a long time, has now also found its way into our server setup: There's more than one main server available to handle user activity in realtime. Whenever a user enters or leaves the experience, we will keep an overview which servers remain available and which are full. For the launch day we provided 16 server instances to be perfectly prepared.
The launch day in numbers
The big day: On 17.02.2022 at 13 o'clock it started, already 688 anticipators waited on the countdown page until they could enter.
