Ikea’s first catalog in virtual reality on HTC Vive
Apart from that related to the field of gaming, there are, for virtual reality, a number of application areas still to be explored. One of these is certainly the one related to the field of b2b furniture stores. This application Ikea it is the first concrete example.
Virtual reality is now a reality. Appliances like Oculus Rift, HTC Lives and Samsung Gear VR, already on the market for some time, they offer the chance to enjoy virtual reality content in an extremely simple and intuitive.
And though often our thinking on the VR is limited to applications such as video games or visual experiences such as movies to 360 degrees, we forget one of the most interesting aspects of this technology, namely one involving the B2B field.
Ikea is one of the first companies to engage in the use of virtual reality and the application of which we’re about to talk about is just a demonstration of what has been stated above. The Swedish furniture giant has partnered with HTC and Steam to bring on Vive VR experience linked to their catalog of furniture for the kitchen.
It is a pilot project, which will probably be followed by others probably related to other rooms of the house, until you have the application VR throughout its catalog.
Ikea VR Experience is the name of the application, will allow users to design their own kitchen accessing one of three predefined and customizing design with furniture that the more we own terms among those included in the catalog.
But not only, of each piece of furniture, you can choose color and material finishes, just like in a showroom, with the difference that the result will be directly under our eyes.
Ikea VR Experience has been developed in collaboration with Allegorithmic, the French company which deals with software development and who made use of the Unreal Engine 4 to complete the application.
If you have a HTC Lives there remains only prove the VR Ikea experience before next August, when the pilot project is finished and, probably, developers will focus on a full version of the virtual catalog.
