Bill’s Reals Blog - Scuba, Travel & Gadgets

I walking down the aisle and I saw a bunch of people standing around, so of course I stopped to see what was going on. The booth was showing a demo of a software product called DiveNav which is a scuba diving simulation “game” dubbed vDive. It was unique in the aspect that they mapped areas and you were virtually diving the topography of the area. In the demo, they were showing Casino Point on Catalina Island.

They were doing a survey and by participating in the survey you got a little holographic dive map of Casino Point. This represents the ONLY piece of swag that I picked up at this show.

Anyway, the product looks like a first person action shoot, Gears of War, Halo, and you see the world through your dive mask. You have gauges, can run out of air and you navigate underwater while swimming around. I found it boring and was struggling to see the market for it, alas this is what happens when you work in marketing. I realize that I’m not there target market but still I have an opinion.

The survey seemed like they had built a product and now where trying to figure out the market for it. That’s not a good sign in the software business where you can be obsolete in months. All the best to them, I hope they do well but I’m just more of a get-out-there-and-do-it kind of guy now and would rather go on a real dive.