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IKEA Augmented Reality Catalog Lets You Preview Products In Your Apartment
Elliot Chang writes "IKEA's upcoming 2014 catalog will allow customers to preview products in their own homes using augmented reality via iOS and Android phones."
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you will have to assemble it using your own virtual Allen key.
Who needs Augmented Reality when we already have Virtual Reality already ?
We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
The Klipsk personal office unit. The Hovetrekke home exerbike. Or the Johanneshov sofa with the Strinne green stripe pattern. What kind of dining set defines me as a person?
...it's still Ikea furniture. I'm sure I'm not their target demographic, tho. 15-20 years ago, sure.
As long as it looks like this
What better way to find out if the Veksle personal office unit, the Hovertrekke home excerbike or the Ohana sofa with the string green stripe pattern defines you as a person!
The low end is foil-wrapped particleboard, and is crap.
The mid range, is stained pine, and some of it is okay as long as you realized that it will dent fairly easily and is just barely beefy enough to do the job so it "feels" cheap.
The high end is solid walnut/oak/birch/maple, and is reasonably good, given that it's mostly designed to knock down for transport.
I have a solid birch kitchen table that is 9 years old. It's still in fine condition, except for where the kids dented the top banging it with utensils. The main downside is that it's laminated together from a bunch of short pieces of wood, but it cost less than it would to just buy the wood if I were to build it myself (which I could).
The Ikea kitchen cabinets use Blum hardware, which is about as good as it gets. Even there, you can get foil-wrapped particleboard doors, or painted MDF, or solid hardwood....you pick the quality level (and therefore the price).
I think I heard somewhere that the first rule of Ikea Augmented Reality Catalog is: Don't talk about Ikea Augmented Reality Catalog.
This year's catalog also had the same feature: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPfUN4ffssU
I am Jack's augmented reality
NSFW IKEA catalog.
Do not view at work.
In 2008, Ikea had Google "Sketchup" models available for download. I had some, so went all-out before moving to a much-smaller place.
I measured the (funky-shaped) condo I was buying to make a 3D model. Downloaded and inserted models of actual Ikea shelves & dressers, then close-enough models of my various other furniture, available everywhere, and re-sized as appropriate. It was then effortless to arrange the furniture, and to try out all possible arrangements. NOTE: It is much easier to move bookcases and couches around with a mouse.
OK, so how to work with the movers? I wrote big numbers on Post-Its, and stuck them every big item. Then, printed a bird's-eye screen grab of the SketchUp model with furniture in-place. Finally, I magic-markered a big corresponding number on each item, and printed 4 copies.
The next step was to sit around drinking wine while they put everything exactly where it went. No confusion. Magically, everything fit, down to the inch.
Do you have to compile it yourself?
Do you have to spend 45 minutes hitting the back out of program button only to be shown another back out of program button before it lets you exit the program?
(I refuse to give Ikea any money at all after having been in one of there stores and wanting to leave)
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What I need is VR system to help me figure out how I can cram six flat-packs into my car.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Perhaps they should start slow attempt to sell a few products online before jump head-first into the Minority Report-style furniture catalog.
this has been done like zillions of times already. i remember years ago seeing kids books where you could look at it through a screen and see characters walking about on top of the page.
I'll take my girlfriend annoyingly scan our apartment with her smartphone rather than accompany her for hours in IKEA.
The video is at least partially faked (the images do not move in sync with the devices, especially in the last shot with multiple devices) so I wonder how well it actually works?
I doubt that the tracking is really that smooth.
Ikea is famous not letting you leave, I would hate if the app kept running after you told it you wanted to leave, and kept taking over the phone again.
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Id also like to see how the furniture looks with a hot naked chick using them.
Because i um have one of those at home...
Seeing this article makes me thing Ikea is distributing inexpensive 3-d sunglasses with product pictures on the surface of the lens. One for bookshelfs, one for a five door dresser, maybe others for variants in color and size. Who needs a smart phone when a 5-cent piece of cardboard and plastic can do the same thing?
This year's catalog also had the same feature
Not the same feature at all. The 2013 version just shows 3D models above the pages of the catalogue so that you can see what products look like or browse directly to web pages for more information on the product. The 2014 version shows the products "in situ" so that you can see what they would look like if you had them in your room. This requires significantly better 3D tracking to work properly, though the promotional video doesn't really show how well it works in practice.
I think this is generally a great idea, but why not make it available for Windows/MacOS/Linux? If I wanted to see how an item looked in my home, I'd probably want to see that on my 23" monitor, not my iPhone screen.