[Courtesy of IKEA]
IKEA, worldwide popular furniture and home ware company released "IKEA VR Experience" earlier this month through Steam game network and it seems as if the company just opened a new doorway to effectively using virtual reality (VR) as a company PR tool.
Going shopping in IKEA outlets are both fun and frustrating. Especially if you are shopping in Korea, the largest IKEA outlet mall in the world, it takes about two hours to navigate through series of showrooms, and another hour if you are wishing to find and buy stuff from the storage area.
[COurtesy of IKEA]
It is like a well-planned dungeon. Once you enter, there is no turning back. Also, you have to fight against your inner urge from wanting to buy everything. But IKEA showrooms are revolutionary in some way so that the customers can actually see and feel how the furniture would fit into their home by simulating through series of exemplary showrooms of different types, sizes, and concepts.
IKEA VR Experience is a near perfect solution to not to visit the actual showrooms, but get an idea of how the company's furniture would look and feel in a real life-like environment. IKEA VR Experience will be ideal for the disabled or people living far away from the showrooms to actually visit, compare and try out what suits them the most.
[Courtesy of IKEA]
The VR program only provides a virtual kitchen at the moment, but users are able to roam about freely, look at furniture and kitchenware from a different angle, open drawers, instantly change the look of the kitchen by changing a different material finish, and even explore the kitchen from a child's view.
IKEA VR Experience supports HTC's Vive VR headsets connected to a PC. It's free to play. IKEA stated that the kitchen in the VR showroom is very similar to one that is included in the 2016 IKEA Catalogue.
As the media around the world says, this year is going to be the year of VR, but unfortunately, VR contents are mostly games. This is what makes the IKE VR Experience the fresh and new experience. So far, the user ratings on the VR experience have recorded 91 percent positive. That's very high by the Steam users' standards.
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