AR Foundation 
Unity Unity Cloud Volcap A refreshed version of the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team VIP Garage Tour, featuring new volumetric captures, additional interviews, a reaction-time minigame, and streamlined narrative flow.
Overview
This project was a continuation of the 2023 VIP Garage Tour, updated for the 2024 Formula 1 season. The experience was streamlined to focus exclusively on the garage environment, removing less engaging modules like the Treehouse and Fuel Lab. New volumetric captures of Toto Wolff and George Russell were added, alongside more interview content, refreshed 3D assets, and updated VFX. To close the experience, we introduced a reaction-time minigame that ranked players on a live leaderboard, with top scorers winning event prizes.
The update also brought the project to new hardware: the Meta Quest 3. The performance boost we got from moving away from the Lenovo VRX allowed us to polish the visual fidelity further and deliver a smoother overall user experience.
My Contributions
I worked as lead developer, coordinating tasks across multiple developers and ensuring smooth onboarding.
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Implemented new volumetric capture intros of Toto Wolff and George Russell,
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Revised app flow for a more streamlined and guided approach.
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Updated supplemental hotspot content, including new interviews and stereoscopic 360 captures.
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Updated and refreshed 3D assets and VFX to match Mercedes brand identity for the 2024 race season and achieve higher visual fidelity.
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Helped implement the reaction-time minigame.
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Oversaw QA and performance tuning for Quest 3 deployment.
Technical Highlights & Challenges
One of the defining aspects of this refresh was the timeline pressure. The project had a quick turnaround, so our strategy focused on leveraging the existing framework while polishing and adding new content rather than reinventing systems. Bringing in additional developers sped up delivery, but it also required careful oversight and coordination on my part to maintain consistency.
The migration to Quest 3 was another key improvement. Compared to the original VRX hardware, Quest 3 provided more power and smoother performance, effectively removing many of the technical constraints we’d faced in the earlier version. This allowed us to push visuals further without major optimization bottlenecks.
Results
The updated experience launched successfully at the 2024 Miami Grand Prix, receiving positive feedback from VIP guests. Updating to a streamlined and guided tour (as opposed to a fully user-directed approach) significantly increased user throughput at the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 VIP booth. The addition of the reaction-time minigame and leaderboard proved particularly engaging at the event and has since helped the experience adapt well for use at pop-up activations where fans and customers can try it out.
Reflection
While this was not as groundbreaking as the first Garage Tour, I’m proud of how we executed a high-quality refresh under time constraints. The streamlined flow, new volcap performances, and polished visuals maintained the bar we had already set while keeping the content fresh for a new season. Looking forward, I see opportunities to take advantage of newer Unity features for lighting and post-processing, which would let us raise the visual fidelity even further on modern HMDs.
