Xiaomi, one of the largest smartphone brands in the world, introduced their new Redmi Note 11 series at the german market and asked us to create a brand new metaverse platform for the launch event. A branded virtual showroom tailored to the GenZ target group. To experience the products up close in 3D, get together and share the first ever impression of the new Redmi phones and smart home products.
The goal
Raise momentum on the launch of the Redmi Note 11 series in the post-millennial target group by offering them a shared experience in a cool and relevant space. Create a vibrant virtual stage for the new phones and premiere a product launch in the very own Xiaomi metaverse.
Stand out appearance
Xiaomi wanted to offer their prospective customers a space to come together, experience products in full detail but yet in a playful way – and create a nice vibe around them. In order to achieve this we developed the Xiaomi Virtual Showroom, a metaverse of its own. We focused on a direct and simple user flow: without any registration process visitors are able to jump right into the space (of course after spending some time to create their customized avatar look as sharp as ever).
The stage for the big performance
And here’s where it all begins: Starting at the stairs you look into the open urban space that extends over three levels. Inside you'll find the four new smartphones and at the top the Smart Air Purifier 4 which keeps the room fresh. For a nice view you can go to the rooftop terrace and have a dance party while listening to music from the new Redmi Buds 3 Lite. To make the experience feel as immersive and fluid as possible while still providing access for everyone, we optimized the 3D environment and textures for low-end mobile devices.
Anywhere, anytime!
Accessible to everyone, at any time. A matching stage in Xiaomi branding that underlines the technology and innovation of the products and makes them tangible.
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 finally entered the space.
