F1 Pit Fanzone

LiDAR Scanning for an F1 Augmented Reality Experience

F1’s Pit Fanzone puts fans inside a replica pit environment through an augmented reality installation… and AR only works if the digital overlay lines up exactly with the physical space around it. We were brought in to scan the Fanzone structure with terrestrial LiDAR to produce that base.

A pit lane is an awkward thing to scan properly: equipment rigs, cabling, overhead gantries and reflective metalwork all crowd the geometry, and every scan position has to be planned so nothing ends up occluded in the final point cloud. We worked across multiple positions to get full coverage without gaps… the kind of unglamorous groundwork that AR depends on completely and audiences never think about.

Point cloud processing from the LiDAR pass was only the first step. We combined it with high-resolution photogrammetry to deliver fully textured mesh geometry, processed and optimised for real-time AR rendering, with the polygon count tuned for on-device performance while keeping the spatial accuracy that makes the overlay track correctly against the real environment.

With AR, there’s no room to fudge it. If the digital pit doesn’t sit exactly where the physical one does, the whole illusion falls apart the second someone moves their phone. Getting the scan right the first time is what let the rest of the experience just work.