‘READY PLAYER ONE’

included the Moët bottles in the salon, on the flybridge and in the fridges of the galley,” says Angela Pernsteiner, managing partner of design and development at Dominator. “Users are amazed about the level of detail possible in such an experience.”

It was arguably the first use of modern virtual-reality technology at a boat show, an idea Dominator conceived to market the Ilumen before building the yacht.

“My brother Christoph, who is the IT expert, and I did intense research and found out that there is virtual-reality technology from the video games industry where you can have a real feeling, as opposed to only some 3-D animations with goggles,” Pernsteiner says. “We took the experience and the tools from the ‘ nerdy’ video gaming industry and combined it with the luxury elements.”

The Dominator system also lets users change the yacht by using a joystick control— combining yacht marketing and yacht design.

“If the client walks through the main salon and wishes to have light gray oak flooring instead of the dark brown oak parquet, this can be realized within seconds,” Pernsteiner says. “Exchanging the striato olimpico marble in the owner’s bathroom on the main deck with calacatta oro marble, or marveling the changes from zebrano wood to teak wood in the owner’s suite, has never been easier before. Other interactive features include watching the opening and closing of the moonroof in the Ilumen owner’s suite or viewing the mechanism of the retractable roof of the carbon hardtop on the flybridge.”

Vripack, too, is using its virtual-reality technology for yacht marketing—and not just on custom builds. For example, with the Bavaria E40, Vripack needs to market a design with a helm station uniquely positioned aft, creating a vantage point that even the most experienced owners of express motoryachts have trouble conceiving.

“We were really struggling, how to bring across this feeling of this helm station,” Bouwhuis says. “You can make a rough mockup with a helm station and a chair, but you’re in a joiner shop. How do you get the feeling of the boat? The atmosphere of this unique position? The virtual environment allows you to have the view, the joinery around you—you can almost understand the atmosphere.”

Monaco-based Yachting Partners International had a similar challenge in marketing 344-foot (105-meter) Raptor, a concept yacht. YPI Group, too, turned to virtual reality, building a system that experts say is even more advanced because regular computers aren’t strong enough to process the experience.

“The stuff that we’re doing, I can pretty confidently say at this juncture, absolutely nobody else is doing,” says Mark Duncan, group commercial director for YPI Group. “The guys at [Dutch technology firm] Bricks & Goggles have developed an Oculus Rift system exclusively for us. You have various levels of virtual reality just within those goggles. We have to go around with a big, massive box on a little chariot of wheels in order to do this for clients. No computer can handle the amount of data that this processes.”