
Lucid lets shoppers customize cars like a video game character - jacquesm
https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/09/lucid-lets-shoppers-customize-cars-like-a-video-game-character/
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Jelthi
Reading this article makes my head hurt. Has this techcrunch writer never been
to a car website before or played an RPG? There is nothing special about the
LUCID car builder. If you say something like "like a video game character" I'd
expect something nuts like being able to adjust body panels or the height or
specific colors for specific areas. You know, like how you can in video games.

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reitzensteinm
I don't know, I make games for a living and I'd probably describe it that way.
I got major NFSU vibes from it.

I haven't seen any 3D configuration tools for cars, but I haven't been looking
either. What other brands do it like this?

Which isn't to defend the site. I went in to it wanting to be excited by it,
but found the experience to be poor.

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Jelthi
I think my favorite is by Genesis. There are a few others with 3D models. The
only point I was making is LUCID isn't the first to do it and so it's not
nearly as special as the article made it out to be.

Give me an option to put graphics, underglow, and a sweet body kit on my next
car then I'll agree it's like a NFS game :)

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reitzensteinm
Oh wow, Genesis is very similar, and much better done. You're totally right
that this isn't special.

I think the Lucid environment and models are much higher detail, but that's
probably the reason why Genesis runs in the browser and Lucid is streamed as
video. And the streaming makes the experience _awful_.

My guess for what happened is the team built a demo for fancy VR sales kiosks
that run a 2080 Ti, and porting it to the web was an afterthought.

Given that the CEO is also the CTO, and the page is an important part of the
sales process, I'd go as far as to consider it a minor red flag.

They should put underglow options behind the Kanomi code :)

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Jelthi
Agreed on the streaming issue. Especially noticeable on a phone. Genesis vs
Lucid is night and day. Lucid is a big lag fest.

You know if someone actually used the Konami code on a car builder for an
easter egg like that it'd totally sway my purchasing decision even if it was
just for fun.

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queuep
Quite cool, but not sure, it's not very performant for me and blurry on 4K
monitor.

I like Porsche's configurator alot more, and there's probably a handful other
brands which do the same.

[https://cc.porsche.com/icc/ccCall.do?rt=1599986692&screen=25...](https://cc.porsche.com/icc/ccCall.do?rt=1599986692&screen=2560x1440&userID=EG&lang=en&PARAM=parameter_internet_en&ORDERTYPE=982121&CNR=C16&MODELYEAR=2021&hookURL=https%3a%2f%2fwww.porsche.com%2fuk%2fmodelstart%2fall%2f)

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reitzensteinm
It appears to be rendered on a good GPU, and streamed over as video. They
should _really_ consider doing it in WebGL with static images if they detect
the graphics card is not capable.

I can I'd be impressed with the experience if it were rendering locally (on a
4k monitor with a 2070), but in its current state it is just not good.

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dangus
Cars are dumb. There’s no better car than a 3-year-old used
corolla/Prius/soul/fit/Mazda3/versa/civic/etc.

Any sort of electric car won’t touch these cars’ pure economic advantage for
probably a decade if not longer or ever.

I don’t really care how good the buying experience is. The best buying
experience is the one that doesn’t charge me more than $10,000-15,000 for a
reliable form of transportation.

Funny how we didn’t even know who Lucid was until this week. Then again, I
don’t have to know who they are to know who they are: an off-brand Tesla
knock-off.

Electric cars are cool but they aren’t the solution to the mistake of
automobile-based suburban-style development.

