Inspiration
I have been watching Formula 1 since I was a boy. I love everything about the sport, especially the (Mercedes) cars and the engineering behind them. I always wished I could show my liking for F1. So I decided to build this website where people can explore these amazing cars in 3D. This project is really just my way of showing my genuine love for the sport and sharing it with other fans.
What it does
The website lets you interact with four famous cars from different times in F1 history. You can spin them around, zoom in, and read about their stats. I also created an aero mode where you can see smoke flowing over the car bodies to understand how the aerodynamics work. For the Mercedes car, you can even take it apart to look at the chassis and the engine inside.
How I built it
I have to give a huge amount of credit to Codex for this project. Honestly, without Codex acting as my personal coding partner, I would never have been able to build this. I used it to write the React and Three js code, and it patiently helped me figure out all the really complicated 3D camera math and logic that I did not understand on my own. I used Vite to put it all together. I used a tool called meshoptimizer to compress the huge 3D files so they would load fast enough for a normal internet connection. For the design, I wrote my own CSS to make it look dark and clean like a real racing garage.
Challenges I ran into
The biggest challenge was dealing with the massive file sizes of the 3D cars. Some of them were over 50 megabytes. Getting them to load without crashing the browser or making the website freeze was really hard. I had to learn how to compress the files and make sure the code waits for them to load before showing anything. Another challenge was making sure the aerodynamics smoke effect looked right without slowing down the website too much on normal computers.
Accomplishments that I am proud of
I am really proud that the website actually looks and feels the way I imagined it. Seeing the cars load up and being able to pull them apart in the browser is a great feeling. I am also very proud that I was able to figure out the coding bugs and get the whole thing published online on my own domain.
What I learned
I learned that building things with 3D graphics on the internet is really hard, but so much fun once it actually works. Before this, I had no idea how to make huge files small enough to load on a normal website, but now I know a lot more about it. Most importantly, I learned that with the right AI tools like Codex, you can build things that you thought were way too advanced for you. I also learned that you have to be really patient when you are trying to get lighting and shadows to look just right.
What is next
I want to add more classic cars from the older generations. I think it would also be amazing to connect the website to real racing data so you can watch a digital replay of famous laps right in the browser.
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