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EPL [soylentnews.org] writes:

IKEA Communications AB has launched the IKEA VR Experience [steampowered.com] on Steam [steampowered.com] today, allowing anyone the chance to walk through a self-constructed IKEA kitchen from the comfort of their own home. And when we say everyone, we mean everyone who has a HTC Vive, it's motion controllers and a PC that is capable of running such a set-up.

The Experience was made in collaboration with the French company Allegorithmic [allegorithmic.com] in the Unreal Engine 4 by Epic Games and will be supported till the end of august. The blurb on the Steam store page tells us that till then you can "explore and interact with an IKEA Kitchen in Virtual Reality! Walk around freely, open drawers and put your vegetable peelings in the waste sorting station. You can even enjoy the visual impact of different material finishes and experience things from a child’s point of view."

In it's press release IKEA says they believe VR will be an everyday part of our lives in 5 to 10 years and that they see it playing a mayor part in the lives of their customers then. They envisage using this (kind of) technology to test out different interiors and furnishings before buying furniture of accessories according to Jesper Brodin, managing director of IKEA of Sweden and Range & Supply Manager bij IKEA Group.

IKEA sees this as the first step and hopes the IKEA VR Experience will be embraced by uses to help them develop the app or virtual reality in general. They encourage users to share their ideas with them (e.g. via email VRDevelopment@ikea.com).

Press release source: http://www.ikea.com/nl/nl/about_ikea/newsitem/pb_keuken_app [ikea.com] in Dutch as I was unable to find the equivalent article on the UK or USA IKEA websites, but the Allegorithmic has English text.

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