Quintar looks to build on momentum for PGA Tour spatial experience for Apple Vision Pro
Quintar looks to build on momentum for PGA Tour spatial experience for Apple Vision Pro
The Players Championship was the first event to feature 18 holes of coverage for the AVP app, PGA Tour Vision.
BY ETHAN JOYCE
3.29.2024
Competition around this year’s The Players Championship allowed the PGA Tour to hit a massive tech milestone: It was the first event that featured 18 holes of coverage through its Apple Vision Pro app, PGA Tour Vision.That app -- which rolled out with the AVP launch on Feb. 2 and has provided more hole coverage with every tournament since the Pebble Beach Pro-Am -- was developed by Quintar. The user experience allowed fans to see a 3D model of each hole, see past and real-time performances of golfers on those holes, and even provide views of a golfer’s lie.
The creation of PGA Tour Vision comes with several major benefits to the immersive experience company, says co-founder and president Jeff Jonas. The first, Quintar becoming part of a forward-looking project, Jonas said, adding that “the reaction’s been outstanding” from the PGA regarding The Players’ AVP coverage.The PGA Tour didn’t provide any metrics from the Tour Vision experience for the event but indicated excitement toward the overall product so far. They also added there are plans later this year to add more definition to the immersive view to create a more realistic user experience.
The second benefit came from Quintar’s time on the ground at the weeklong event: catching the eye of people walking around the PGA suite near the 18th hole and demoing the app for them.“I probably was able to demo that at Players to, let’s say, 20 people,” Jonas told SBJ. “And I think I was 20-for-20 in terms of people being ‘wow,’ and wanting to get more and wanting to stay in the headset.”Both of those benefits can lead to future development opportunities for Quintar. Jonas and co-founder Jay Jayaram often mention that this was the type of user experience Quintar was built for – to provide quality content for the wearables competition that was developing at the time of their company’s creation.
This is the third year of Quintar’s partnership with the PGA, serving as the tour’s official mobile AR and XR developer. It has offered AR mobile viewing opportunities to in-person fans through its visual positioning system to provide highly accurate ball positioning and data.That now comes through to AVP users in their homes, which comes to life by allowing virtual and actual realities to sync through the spatial-computing capabilities of the AVP.
“People aren’t going to spend $3,500 on something that that they can only, basically, watch TV in,” Jonas added. “It has to be something that is built specifically for those headsets. And that’s what’s so exciting about what we’re doing.”