Lexus Visceral Reality

FEEL what it is like to race around in a Lexus without going anywhere.

Read the Case study

Lexus Visceral Reality

Client: Team One

Experience Amazing with this Amazing Experience

Imagine you’re the passenger seated in a sleek Lexus RC F – Luxury Sport Coupe while a world champion race car driver aggressively speeds you around the Willow Springs International Raceway; tackling the twists and turns; feeling the sudden shift in acceleration while jockeying with a blue, pesky Lexus GS F; and enduring the heat of the engine and the smell of burning rubber. Lexus invites you to Experience Amazing, and this is definitely an amazing experience!

Through our successfully continued relationship with Team One and Lexus, we were given the opportunity to create from scratch this 4D VR experience which made its exhilarating, smile-evoking, and breath-taking debut at the Long Beach Grand Prix.

With only three and a half weeks until the big racing event, we began designing the look and the engineering of this custom-made motion based simulator, while filming of the visual content was taking place on the raceway at Willow Springs. With a 360° camera mounted to the inside the RC F above the passenger seat, a professional race car driver sped through the course and maneuvered around additional Lexus drivers, all while sensors collected telemetry data of the ride.

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Our creative technologists took the provided racing footage and telemetry data and synchronized them to our custom-fabricated simulator. This simulator consisted of a race car seat connected to the base by multiple axis points. Based on the turns, accelerations, and braking observed through the VR goggles, these axis points were triggered by servo motors to mimic the same movement and give the passenger a synchronized experience.

While belted in the seat and donning VR goggles, the passenger physically experiences the movements they witness in virtual reality. To help fully immerse the passenger into this amazing experience, generated wind is blown at the passenger during strategic moments of the ride, and blasts of warm air mixed with the smell of burning rubber pass over the passenger whenever the engine revs and the car aggressively accelerates.

A monitor and state of the art sound system mounted to the stylishly angular housing allows spectators to view and hear what the passenger sees during the adventure.

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If you missed Lexus’ Visceral Reality event at the Long Beach Grand Prix, don’t worry. You can now check it out at its new home in Plano, Texas located at the Toyota Experience Center just north of Dallas.