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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.
As long as it looks like this
People always say this. I don't think they've actually looked at real Ikea furniture, just Ikea-inspired 'modular' furniture from Walmart and Target. There is a major difference.
The La-Z-boy chair is the lowest quality furniture in my living room. And feels it.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
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).
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?
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.
I'll take my girlfriend annoyingly scan our apartment with her smartphone rather than accompany her for hours in IKEA.
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.