Kravet demos new mixed-reality furniture shopping app at HPMkt – Furniture Today

HIGH POINT — Home furnishings resource Kravet is demoing its new mixed-reality visualization app Arrange 3D at this week’s High Point Market.

Developed in partnership with 3D visualization solutions provider Intiaro, the companies say that this first-of-its-kind application — which utilizes the Apple Vision Pro headset — has the potential to rewrite what is possible for designers seeking to get a real-time look at how furniture pieces and fabric options will play out within a space.

Jesse Lazarus, chief technology officer for Kravet, said that mixed reality provided the logical next step in the development of furniture and fabric visualization technology.

“When the Apple Vision Pro device came to market and we procured one of the devices, we tried it out ourselves in our office, and our immediate thought was the application this could have for the design space,” he said. “My mind immediately went to Intiaro, as I thought they would be perfect partners for this project.”

Lazarus explained that, as a fabric-first furniture company, Kravet is uniquely positioned to use this new technology to its fullest potential through the partnership with Intiaro.

“In our DNA, we’re a fabric company that sells furniture,” Lazarus said. “We have 15,000 fabrics that can be rendered on frame and in visualization. That’s a real obstacle that needed to be overcome. We saw Intiaro’s ability to work with the scale of our fabric library as key to maintaining that realism throughout the customization process.”

Intiaro co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer Michal Stachowski noted that advancements in mixed reality technology like those seen in the Apple Vision Pro have lowered the barriers to adoption for many users.

“Obviously mixed reality helmets have been here before. Most of them are a lot more clunky,” he explained. “I’m one of the people that get extremely motion sick, and this is the first one that I can actually work in. And I think we’re getting to the point when introducing people to this doesn’t create all the pain points that it did before.

“The sheer novelty also helps because people want to try out the experience,” he added.

The features of the Apple Vision Pro itself are also helping to address some of the pain points that marred earlier mixed reality applications.

“I think mixed reality is kind of the promise that augmented reality and virtual reality never really fulfilled,” added Lazarus.

“For years in our industry we’ve been talking about augmented reality and the impact it can have, and it never really gets there. The quality of the visualization is often limited because of the power of the device you may be on. And on the flip side of that, VR has never really filled that need, because you can only tolerate that digital environment for so long.

“What this device is doing is bringing that high quality photorealistic rendering, but you’re in your own space, so it’s easier to tolerate,” he continued. “I think, I think the obstacles to adoption are much lower.”

An easy and familiar user interface provided by Apple’s UI is another factor that could spur adoption of applications like Arrange 3D.

“I think one of the benefits of the device itself is that you can take advantage of Apple’s excellent UX UI concepts,” explained Lazarus. “They’ve already accounted for an easy way to adopt users to the gesturing and the eye direction that necessary, and then collaboratively we gave the app itself a tutorial for the user.”

Kravet’s Arrange 3D application is on display and available for demos until Sunday, Oct. 27, in the company’s showroom at 200 Steele.

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