IKEA has turned remodeling your kitchen into an HTC Vive VR game.
The Swedish furniture giant has launched a virtual reality app called the IKEA VR experience, just in time as the first HTC Vive headsets begin shipping today.
The pilot app which is available on Steam VR and built using Unreal Engine 4 from Epic Games, lets Vive headset owners design their own virtual Ikea kitchen that is true to size. Once inside the app, you can explore one of three differently-styled kitchen room settings and change the color of cabinets and drawers with a click.
Change the color of cabinets.
Another feature is the ability to view the VR kitchen from different perspectives by either shrinking or stretching yourself to move around the kitchen at the size of a 3.3 foot-tall child or a 6.4 foot-tall adult. This could be a very useful feature, allowing you to walk around the room in someone else’s shoes and enable you to discover hidden dangers or possible design solutions.
Select if you want to be adult or child height.
As a first foray into VR, the app is intended to solicit feedback as Ikea explores next steps. “Virtual reality is developing quickly and in five to ten years it will be an integrated part of people’s lives,” says Jesper Brodin, managing director at IKEA of Sweden. “We see that virtual reality will play a major role in the future of our customers. For instance, someday, it could be used to enable customers to try out a variety of home furnishing solutions before buying them.”
The IKEA VR Experience is available now as a free-to-play HTC Vive game on SteamVR and will be updated continuously until this particular pilot test comes to an end in August.
