Taking advantage of the long weekend, MarineVerse team Greg and Olga organised internal VR + Sailing Jam.

TLDR: This is a 60s video about the sailing racing game we decided to create for GearVR.

Try VR Regatta sailboat racing game.

Four days of hard work and intense thinking :-)

We used a lot of sticky notes to figure out why we’re building MarineVerse, who (we think) wants it, and what our strategy moving forward should be.

With the launch of consumer VR devices this month, virtual reality is a hot topic right now. We believe, VR is here to stay and as the technology matures it will become more and more relevant in all aspects of our lives, including sailing.

Sailing and VR can be interesting, whether you are a gamer, sailing newbie, salty dog or an instructor - VR has something to offer.

If you are a gamer, a sailing game might be just a fun thing to do. If you are learning to become a competent sailor, VR can greatly enhance your training. If your are a salty dog, stranded on shore for some reason (maybe it’s off-season) - VR can help you survive till the next summer. Running a sailing club? VR can help attract people to join your club.

Anyway, we brainstormed what kind of person would benefit the most at this stage and what we could build in 4 days. In the end we’ve decided to build a sailing regatta game.

VR Regatta suits GearVR owners, who are looking for fun content to play. It can be a gateway drug into the world of sailing ;-) It’s also something we thought we could pull off, based on our recent adventure with “Sail to Freedom”.

Why GearVR and not Cardboard? Our data and experience suggests that GearVR is the right choice here. During the last 3 months we have been developing and releasing for both platforms and we can clearly see that we get more usage on GearVR. It makes sense. Cardboard is just not as comfortable as GearVR.

So what do we want to achieve with VR Regatta?

VR Regatta

We want VR Regatta to:

  • be fun to play
  • give you some insight into how sailing works
  • be something you can get good at
  • be something to which you will keep coming back
  • be comfortable to play

We’re going to submit it to GearVR Store (for free), so more people can discover it.

Thank you for reading so far! Hope you will enjoy VR Regatta when it’s ready. If you want a sneak preview of it, we will be releasing it on SideloadVR soon. Any feedback and ideas how to improve it, as always, are much appreciated.