Sea Ray received a Qualcomm Vuforia Vision Award for the company’s L650 Fly Augmented Reality application.
The global contest awards five winners each year from hundreds of entries.
Other 2014 winners were Samsung, Lego, Sesame Street Workshop and the Guinness Book of World Records.
“We’re so pleased with the consumer and critical reception the L650 Fly app has received,” Sea Ray vice president of marketing Matt Guilford said in a statement. “The app was designed to bridge a gap between consumer enthusiasm for our new L-Class flagship and limited product availability in the field, given high retail demand. With many of our yachts already spoken for, the app provides a novel, compelling way for prospective customers to experience the boat.”
The app features interior and exterior tours of Sea Ray’s flagship model. The boat design in the app is taken directly from the computer-aided drafting files used to build the L650 Fly, so the experience within the app is as close as possible to the actual boat, down to the smallest details.
“It’s increasingly difficult to give people a totally novel experience; something they’ve never done before. We’ve had the Augmented Reality app at several boat shows and VIP events where people are absolutely blown away at what they’re seeing,” Guilford said. “It’s remarkable that simply by looking through a particular lens (in this case, an iPad or iPhone equipped with the free app), you can be having an entirely different experience than the person next to you looking at the same thing. The ability to change colors or add options — like a hardtop or teak decking or sun shades — and see it instantly reflected in a highly accurate 3-D model floating in front of you is helping push the limits of digital interaction.”
Sea Ray employed Ignition Digital Images Inc., a Toronto-based company, to help with the app development. Although Sea Ray and Ignition Digital Images Inc. have been working together for more than five years on various projects, this was only the second implementation of the award-winning Augmented Reality technology for Ignition Digital Images Inc. Mercedes-Benz of Canada partnered with the company to help launch its all-new C Class automobiles a few months earlier.
