Ikea offers a virtual shopping experience with HTC Vive, Steam

Ikea customers will soon walk around kitchens in virtual reality using an app being piloted in Australia.

Ikea’s virtual reality kitchen experience.

Ikea customers will soon be able to walk around kitchens in virtual reality using a VR app being piloted globally, including in Australia.

The world’s largest retail chain announced it had developed an app called Ikea VR which will be available for the HTC Vive, one of three major virtual reality handsets being released this year. It will be available from today on Valve’s gaming platform Steam. Valve is working collaboratively with HTC to push virtual reality content to the Vive.

Ikea says it sees virtual reality as offering new ways to empower customers and to potentially transform the retail experience in home furnishings.

“In the future it could be an opportunity for customers to try new kitchen solutions before they buy them,” Ikea said in a statement today.

Ikea’s virtual reality kitchen experience.

“Ikea has tried different digital tools and identified virtual reality as one of the ways to move forward. The launch of Ikea VR Experience is one of the steps taken within this field. It is a virtual kitchen made to appear to the user in real world size.”

Ikea says that in its virtual retail world, customers can change the colour of cabinets and drawers with a click. They can even see what the kitchen experience would be like for a small child.

“Another feature is the ability to shrink yourself and move around the kitchen in the size of a 3.3 feet (100cm) tall child,” Ikea says.

“You can also enlarge yourself and experience it as 6.4 feet (195cm) tall. These features will be useful from a safety perspective, since walking around the room in someone else’s shoes enables you to discover hidden dangers.”

Jesper Brodin, managing director at Ikea of Sweden, says he sees an enormous future for virtual reality in retail.

A child’s view of a virtual kitchen.

“Virtual reality is developing fast and in five to ten years it will be an integrated part of people’s lives,” he says. “We see that virtual reality will play a major role in the future of our customers, for instance it could be used to enable customers to try out a variety of home furnishing solutions before buying them.”

Range Manager for Ikea Australia Tim Prevade say he is looking forward to hearing customers’ feedback on the experience.

“Australians are known for embracing the latest technology and innovations, so virtual reality has the potential to transform the way people interact with our products in the home.”

Ikea says the app has been made in collaboration with developers at the French company Allegorithmic, using Unreal Engine 4 from Epic Games.

It says Ikea VR Experience will be continuously updated until August when this particular pilot ends.

You can alter the finishes and colour of a virtual kitchen.

Meanwhile convergence, a conference on virtual reality and augmented reality solutions, is scheduled to take place in Sydney on Thursday.

Keynote speakers include Shauna Heller, previously the developer relations specialist at Oculus VR, the firm developing the Oculus Rift VR headset. Her job is was to identify and help develop non gaming, non entertainment VR solutions.

Lawrence Crumpton, technical evangelist for Microsoft’s HoloLens augmented reality experience also will speak.

The Australian has interviewed Ms Heller in the lead up to the convergence event.

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The navigation controls for Ikea’s virtual reality kitchen experience.