At Otherlife, we build unconventional solutions at the forefront of brand, digital design, web experience and engineering.
Being at the cutting edge of our industry is not a static position — it requires constant innovation and a commitment to excellence.
In order to meet this challenge in 2025 and beyond, we have decided to split Otherlife into two separate worlds:
Otherlife Agency: This is what we have been until now – a world for convention-defying, commercial creativity for global clients like Mastercard, Arsenal FC, Vercel, DeLorean, Narcos, and Shopify.
Otherlife Labs: A brand new world for limitless, experimental creation that pushes the boundaries of creativity and emerging technology.
This duality will now serve as our framework for building powerful experiences that drive real-world impact.
Today, we’re excited to unveil our first Otherlife Labs project: A next-generation virtual car showroom that redefines real-time product visualization.
Otherlife Labs Project 1: The road to realism with real-time product configurators.
Why we built this
We believe immersive digital experiences are the future of brand engagement in e‑commerce and gaming. To explore what’s possible, we set out to answer a key question: what would a next-generation e‑commerce experience look and feel like?
This led us to create a showcase experience that demonstrates the quality and potential of next-generation, browser-based product visualization, leveraging the latest innovations in 3D web technology.
While automotive applications are the focus of this initial lab experience, we see broader potential. Industries like luxury retail and real estate could also benefit from immersive configurators that deeply engage customers and enhance their decision-making.
What brands should know:
- 3D products drive sales
- Blockchain technology is redefining ownership and brand engagement
1. 3D Products Drive Sales
According to ARInsider, 77% of buyers prefer to view product variations in 3D or AR before making a purchase, and products featuring interactive 3D models see 94% higher conversion rates. This shift isn’t just about aesthetics — it’s a game-changer for businesses looking to increase engagement and drive sales.
Major brands have embraced this shift. Nike’s “Nike By You” customization platform allows customers to personalize iconic sneakers, selecting colors and design details to create a product uniquely their own. This type of interactive engagement fosters a stronger connection between consumer and product, leading to higher purchase intent.
McLaren’s Artura Spider Car Configurator leverages WebGL to deliver a high-fidelity car customization experience directly in the browser, allowing customers to explore and personalize the vehicle in real-time. Such experiences set new expectations for online shopping, proving that immersive, interactive configurators are the future of digital commerce.
With the rise of Web3 and digital ownership, the relationship between brands and consumers is evolving.
2. Blockchain technology is redefining ownership and brand engagement
As blockchain technology reshapes how we interact with digital assets, traditional concepts of ownership and engagement are being redefined.
Our work with DeLorean Labs exemplifies this transformation. To support the launch of the first DeLorean car in 44 years, we are building the industry’s first Web3-powered marketplace to allow enthusiasts to buy, sell, and trade vehicle reservation slots, all secured by the Sui blockchain.
To drive excitement for the launch, we partnered with Mysten Labs to create the DeLorean Time Capsule, a visionary collectible experience marking the iconic brand’s entry into Web3. By minting an NFT, participants had the chance to win 88 limited-edition physical time capsules or 8,800 digital collectibles, each packed with exclusive rewards — including a new DeLorean EV car, early build slot reservations, F1 experience packages, limited-edition sneakers and apparel, drivable digital DeLoreans in Motorverse Web3 games, and rare collectibles.
Last year, Sony announced Soneium, a blockchain aiming to reshape gaming and digital asset ownership by offering a decentralized platform for Web3 applications. It allows for secure and transparent management of gaming assets, including in-game items and NFTs. This development opens up new opportunities for players to own, trade, and monetize their assets across different virtual environments, enhancing the overall gaming experience and offering more control over digital property.
Creating a next gen product configurator
As brands continue to establish their presence in Web3 technology, there is an increasing need to create interactive experiences that connect users with this technology in meaningful ways — while tapping into the culture of brands and addressing the evolving expectations of tech-forward consumers.
The Virtual Car Showroom was inspired by our partnership with DeLorean Labs and the iconic DeLorean DMC — one of the most recognized cars in the world. We wondered, what if we could bring the classic DMC to life in a future-focused car customization experience? How would it feel for users to interact with the DMC in a next-gen, digital environment?
As part of our Labs initiative, we set out to build a tech demonstration that would showcase the benefits of WebGL technology over pixel-streaming for automotive customization.
When developing 3D web applications, there are two main approaches:
Pixel-streaming delivers high-quality, visually rich experiences but requires a stable, high-speed internet connection and incurs higher costs due to its reliance on cloud infrastructure.
WebGL/WebGPU, on the other hand, runs natively on the user’s device, offering more flexibility and lower latency. However, performance can vary depending on the device’s capabilities.
We sourced four high-quality and optimized car models on Sketchfab by the creator Black Snow: Mclaren Senna, Lamborghini Gallardo LP560, Nissan Skyline GT‑R R35 and Ferarri f40.
Disclaimer: The car models featured in this experience are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or officially licensed by any automobile brand. They are used purely for demonstrative and artistic purposes only.
Each car carries its own distinct identity, from its design language to its cultural significance. For example, the Nissan Skyline, a favourite for many who grew up playing Gran Turismo on PlayStation, adds a nostalgic touch for fans of the iconic ’90s gaming era.
Drivers and motorsport gaming enthusiasts are likely familiar with the many customization options available in the showroom. We intentionally focused on a core set of features designed to be both fun and intuitive, with a few hidden surprises along the way:
- Paint Customization — Adjust the car’s paint, brake colours, headlight hues, iridescence, and decals.
- Dynamic environments — Switch between three distinct lighting setups (dark, light and HDR) with an optional grid floor toggle.
- Immersive Driver’s Seat View — Step inside the car and experience a first-person perspective of the interior.
- Developer mode — Uncover more paint options, headlight hues, and advanced developer settings.
- Screenshot capture — Capture high-quality images of your personalized designs and download them to share or use as wallpaper
All of these features are brought together with a sleek, custom user interface that incorporates modern iconography and glass-like backdrops, echoing the refined aesthetics of contemporary car interface design.
The technical art of realism
How do we quantify realism when experiencing digitally-rendered content?
People often perceive realism through visual cues like lighting, material properties, and motion. But it’s more than just the accuracy of these details; it’s about how they resonate emotionally, making the experience feel authentic and true to life.
For us, our approach leans more into stylistic authenticity, focusing not just on photorealism, but on evoking a sense of believability and immersion through the right combination of artistic choices and technical implementation.
Since the birth of the modern GPU in the late 1990s, real-time rendering has advanced at an exponential pace. Nvidia’s DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) has been a true game-changer, leveraging AI to upscale images while significantly boosting frame rates in modern games. Their latest innovation, Multi Frame Generation — announced at CES — takes this even further by using AI to generate additional frames, enhancing motion fluidity, temporal stability and responsiveness, all while maintaining crisp image quality.
Games like Polyphony Digital’s Gran Turismo 7 showcase extraordinary detail in both environments and car models. Utilizing PlayStation 5’s ray tracing capabilities, the “Scapes” mode creates near photorealistic scenes that players can capture and share with the community.
Whilst achieving the same level of detail as Gran Turismo 7 in a web browser isn’t feasible without pixel-streamed game engine content, web-based experiences offer their own advantages: accessibility and
shareability.
Driven by detail: The mechanics of rendering
Our approach leverages recent innovations in 3D Web rendering — Neutral Tone Mapping and high-quality SSAO (Screen Space Ambient Occlusion) credit to N8AO — which complement each other to create richer contrast and depth.
Our final image presentation is enhanced by resources and techniques available from the open-source 3D graphics web community, including:
- Accumulative soft shadows
- Ground floor reflections
- Dynamic HDR environments
- Physically-based materials
- Post-processing effects
Shadows play an essential role in how we perceive depth in reality and within virtual content. We used Drei’s Accumulative Shadows system to render soft shadows beneath the car, resulting in a more life-like appearance.
By integrating the N8AO processing pass for Screen Space Ambient Occlusion, we further enhance depth perception with natural shadowing in areas where direct lighting wouldn’t reach.
For the car’s reflection on the ground, we customized Three.js Reflector to use MeshStandardMaterial instead of ShaderMaterial, allowing us to introduce roughness which breaks up the environment’s reflection, making it appear more natural and physically accurate.
Dynamic HDR Environment Maps:
Our project supports two types of environment lighting:
- Real-time Rendered Light Formers — A flexible, real-time solution that allows us to control light intensity and position dynamically, ensuring adaptable lighting conditions for different scenes.
- HDR Environment Maps — High Dynamic Range (HDR) images enhance realism by capturing real-world lighting conditions. This enables surfaces, such as the car’s body and windows, to reflect their surroundings in a more natural way, adding depth and material authenticity.
Another fantastic component Drei provides is dynamic Lightformers. A programmable way to add shapes to mimic real-world light sources.
Taking inspiration from Drei, we developed a custom Lightformer solution tailored to our Three.js framework.
For our HDR environment reflections, we utilized gainmap-js, a powerful tool that converts HDR and EXR files to the Adobe Gain map (Ultra HDR) format.
This allowed us to reduce loading times for large EXR images while preserving the rich lighting details and improving the accuracy of material reflections.
The most recognizable customization option for cars is the paint. We extended Three.js MeshPhysicalMaterial to introduce metallic flakes that shimmer under light and custom decals for added personalization. Three.js also supports iridescence, allowing for special paint effects like pearlescent finishes that shift color depending on the viewing angle.
Beyond materials, lighting and contrast play a crucial role in realism. Headlights, illuminated displays, and reflective surfaces all interact dynamically with scene exposure. Without proper tone mapping, bright highlights can become overexposed, while darker areas may lose detail.
Last year, the Khronos Group introduced the Neutral Tone Mapper, designed to improve color accuracy in physically based 3D workflows. Unlike traditional methods that shift hues or introduce unwanted contrast, it preserves a true-to-life appearance — especially valuable for e‑commerce and product visualization.
For a deeper dive, review this article by Emmett Lalish.
In the comparison below, notice how the first image appears overexposed. The rear headlights lack the crisp whiteness from the bloom post-processing pass, and the colors appear more saturated than intended. The second image, with Neutral Tone Mapping applied, restores a more balanced exposure, ensuring better contrast and color accuracy.
Our Virtual Car Showroom is just one example of how web-based 3D experiences can bring products to life with a high level of visual fidelity and interactivity. Beyond automotive applications, businesses in luxury retail, real estate, and product customization can benefit from similar immersive configurators that engage customers and enhance decision-making.
If you haven’t already, try the experience here.
If you’re interested in exploring a customized WebGL solution for your brand, please reach out — we’d love to collaborate.
