Carmeet

Carmeet

Build your car. Cruise one shared city. Meet everyone online.

Carmeet is a free multiplayer car meet that runs in your browser. The city, the 29 cars and the garage come from the PlayStation 2 disc of Need for Speed: Underground 2, taken apart file by file and rebuilt for the web. The racing is gone. What is left is the part everyone remembers: building a car and rolling up to show it off.

Play free in your browser How it was made

Carmeet Free roam · one shared city · everyone online

  • 29cars to build
  • 1shared city
  • 2,000players per server
  • 0downloads
Trailer, captured in the game

What it is

The Carmeet garage: a silver Nissan 350Z on the turntable, with the Customize menu open

01 · Garage

Build it

Pick one of 29 cars from the game and work through the original garage. The menu icons, the italic menu font and the gauges are decoded from the disc too, so it looks the way it did in 2004.

  • Body kits
  • Hoods and wings
  • Paint
  • Vinyls
  • Wheels
  • Tint
  • Neon
Driving through the city at night with the speedometer, map and chat on screen

02 · Streets

Cruise it

Everyone who opens the link lands in the same city. Each car drives on its own torque curve and gearing from the game's data. Talk over proximity voice, type in the chat, and read the name plates to see who is who.

A player out of the car, dancing next to a parked 350Z on a city street

03 · The meet

Park it

Stop anywhere, get out and walk. Sprint over to someone's car, then wave, cheer, point, dance or sit. Your driver is yours to dress, and they follow you onto the street.

A photo taken with the in-game phone: players cheering between rows of parked cars A selfie taken with the in-game phone's front camera at the meet
Both photos were taken with the phone in the game.

04 · Phone

Shoot it

Take out your phone and shoot the meet, back camera or selfie. Every photo gets a film grain and grade, is saved in your browser, and shows up in the garage.

Frames from the trailer. Scroll sideways for more.

How it was made

Underground 2 came out in 2004. Its city was never meant to leave the console, so every step of getting it into a browser had to be worked out from the bytes on the disc.

  1. Read the disc

    The disc image is only ever read, never changed. Its files sit inside packed archives, indexed by hashed names. Rebuilding the hash function recovered the names of 1,381 of its 1,392 files.

    ZDIR index · 24-byte records · h = 33 × h + c

  2. Decode the geometry

    EA stored its models as PlayStation 2 vector unit packets with compressed positions. Where a triangle strip breaks is decided by the vector unit's random number generator, so that generator was rebuilt too. It matches all 140,493 strips it was checked against.

    VIF packets · VU1 random number generator · 140,493 strips

  3. Rebuild the city

    Scenery placement records, texture archives and palettes were decoded and turned into web-ready models. The city streams in around you, cell by cell, so it runs on a phone.

    TPK textures · 4 and 8-bit palettes · streamed cells

  4. Restore the garage

    The 29 player cars come with their body kits, paint, vinyls and wheels. The original garage, the menu icons, the font and the custom gauges are the game's own, decoded and used as they are.

    29 cars · original garage · 496 menu textures · 7 fonts

  5. Recover the sound

    Engine sounds are decoded from the game's own recordings, one grain per engine cycle, and played through each car's rev range.

    Engine sweeps · idle loops · torque curves

  6. Add the people

    None of the social side is on the disc. The walking characters, emotes, phone camera, chat, proximity voice and name plates are new. One server holds up to 2,000 players in the same city, and each player is only sent the people near them.

    WebSockets · WebRTC voice · 2,000 players per server
2026

Carmeet started as a way to walk around the city in a Quest headset and take photographs. The driving came next, and then other people.

Play

Open the link, build your car and drive. There is nothing to install. The server asks for an email the first time you join, and other players never see it.

Keyboard
WASD drive
Space handbrake
E get out
G garage
P phone
T chat
Gamepad
Left stick steers or walks. Triggers are gas and brake. B gets out and back in.
Touch
A steering pad and pedals on screen, in portrait or landscape. The pad walks you when you are out of the car.
Carmeet on a phone, driving with the touch controls

It works on phones too. Touch controls appear by themselves, and a friend on the same link shows up on your street.

Questions

Is Carmeet free?

Yes. It runs in the browser and costs nothing to play. There is nothing to download or install.

Does it work on a phone?

Yes. Touch controls appear on phones and tablets, in portrait or landscape. Keyboards and gamepads work on a computer.

Can you race?

There are no races. Carmeet is about building a car, cruising and meeting up.

Why does it ask for an email?

The public server asks for an email once, before you join. It stays with the host, and other players never see it.

Is Carmeet made by EA?

No. Carmeet is an independent fan project by Levi Foster. It is not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by Electronic Arts.

The garage is open and the street is waiting.

Play free in your browser