Buying a car can be quite an exciting affair. The test drives, looking through swatches to pick a paint scheme, browsing pictures of wheels, picking optional add-ons, and oh, that new car smell.
We live in a 21st century world, and an increasing number of cars are being bought online. Sadly, the experience of buying a car from a website just isn’t the same as getting hands on with the real thing.
At least that was the case until now, because the car configurator from Lucid — the Californian EV company setup up by former Tesla engineers — is so goddamn beautiful it comes as close to the real thing I think most of us will ever get.
The premise is simple, but the execution is just exceptional. Honestly, the pictures don’t do it justice, you need to check it out for yourself.
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If you’ve ever played driving sim games like Gran Turismo, Project Cars, or DiRT, the appearance and functionality of the Lucid configurator should feel familiar. If you ask me, this feels and looks better than even the best driving sim “garages.”
[Read: Why this security engineer loves working in infosec]
As it turns out, the configurator was made by ZeroLight, a Newcastle, UK-based company that specializes in this kind of 3D visualization tech.
To bring the Lucid Air to life, ZeroLight has used ray-tracing technology, the same thing that helps AAA games look as realistic as possible. The visualization is powered by a cloud-based system that has more computing power than 6,500 iPhone 11s.
It’s more than just a pretty interactive picture, though. Lucid says that customers who used the 3D configurator spent 10% more on their vehicles than those that used the 2D tick-box configurator.
Indeed, it’s easy to see why. The Lucid car configurator does an amazing job of showing off the vehicle. Just a shame we don’t have smell-o-vision — yet.
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