An IKEA AR app essentially turns your home into The Sims 5, with the new furniture app allowing you to customize the look of your living room, bedroom, bathroom or just about anywhere else on the fly.
The app, titled IKEA Place, lets users place furniture from the store’s catalog down in front of them in augmented reality, allowing them to see what it’d look like if it was in their own home. The AR functionality isn’t limited to home use, of course, so if you’re that way included you could place an armchair down in the middle of the street just for s***s and giggles, but who are we to tell you what you should do in your own time.
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The internet has pretty much fallen in love with the new app immediately, with it being an impressive tool that works a lot better than you’d think. Far from the limited AR functionality of the likes of Pokemon GO, IKEA seems to have the whole “spacial awareness” thing down, allowing users to drop and drag their furniture in order to see what it looks like from any perspective. Users can even bend down and look under the furniture, just in case they want to see what their flooring looks like beneath it for some reason.
This IKEA AR app is LIT pic.twitter.com/rljyQ3SBDA
— Owen Williams (@ow) September 20, 2017
The IKEA Place app has been compared to The Sims, as much like EA Maxis’ social life simulation game, furniture can be dragged around to your heart’s content and you can effectively live in a virtual recreation of your dream home.
Now millennials can imagine the furniture they could have if they didn’t buy so many avocados pic.twitter.com/2oIxPhVRkv
— Owen Williams (@ow) September 20, 2017
Also, much like The Sims 4, the IKEA Place app currently isn’t filled with much content, but there’s no word yet on whether or not IKEA will introduce other items in the future as part of overpriced expansions.
IKEA Place is making use of Apple’s ARKit, and it looks pretty great while doing it. While we can all have a lot of fun throwing random pieces of virtual furniture into our bedroom, office or out onto the street, we look forward to seeing what other developers do with the iOS augmented reality technology. IKEA Place is free to download right now now on the App Store.
