In a world first, visitors to the major expo were taken through a real world virtual tour of the Bhagwan Dryden, from being lowered to the deck via a crane, exploring the aft and forward sections, visiting the bridge, diving room and decompression chamber, survey and engine rooms and touring the various vessel facilities such as cabins, galley, mess hall, hospital and client rooms.

Using the latest Samsung VR Equipment, Bhagwan Marine immersed visitors in the vessel's surroundings, receiving "a great deal of amazement" from patrons and industry groups as to how real the experience felt, conveying aspects of the vessel in a new, unique and very personal way that no existing photograph, brochure, 3D walkthrough or corporate video could.

"Giving customers a method of visiting our flagship air dive support vessel, the Bhagwan Dryden, which is generally inaccessible for the majority of the year, has proven to be a very cost effective, convenient and realistic form of presentation from the armchair anywhere in the world," marketing manager Matt Syms said.

"Furthermore the imagery can be made accessible to desktop, tablet and phone apps providing an all-round strong marketing tool from one production shoot in 360 surround," Syms said.

Bhagwan Marine was chosen from the hundreds of exhibitors as winners of the Best Stand Award at AOG and intends to make the Bhagwan Dryden VR footage available to the public for viewing in the higher definition format available via the Samsung VR gear and at lower resolutions to other devices via custom apps for Android and iOS.

Bhagwan has facilities in Western Australia, the Northern Territory, Queensland and the United Kingdom and now boasts a fleet of over 150 vessels and employs more than 650 personnel.