I love playing around sandbox apps and games in augmented reality. It lets you do some crazy stuff without needing to stay on an objective. Today I’ve downloaded a popular ARKit app called Housecraft. As of the time of writing, it’s positioned at the 88th place in the Lifestyle category on the App Store.
What do you do in Housecraft?
Unlike some more “serious” AR apps like Room Remix where you can also purchase different products through the app alongside its visualization offering, Housecraft is more a casual and fun type of visualization app-at least for now.
The developer of this app refers to it as an “AR toybox for your home” and I guess that what it is. You use your iPhone or iPad’s camera (I am using the iPad) to place different virtual 3D objects within your real world.
There is a wide variety of items to play around with, including furniture, decor items, etc. You can even use a gun to shoot time items or deploy a tornado, yes tornado, inside your home to make all of your items fly into the sky. This is a great and a fun way to demolish all of your hard work š
As you can see in the video above, You can rotate, move and resize any item. The app has some neat UI which makes it easy to control the positioningĀ and rotation of the item.
Housecraft AR Experience
Housecraft will need to first scan the floor of the room or any other place you decide to use the app at. This ARKit app has a nice visual feedback that shows you the progression of the scan. Once the app able to complete the scan, this is the time when you can start putting 3D models in the scene.
The surface detection works well. I mean, I had a few times where the pumpkin just went through the wall, but this is because ARKit didn’t know there is a wall there. Most of the time it works really well. There was one time that I put a big kid’sĀ bed inside the living room. The problem is that it was too big to fit in by default and once I dropped it in the scene, part of it was laying on the chest of drawers on the left side and it was really funny to see it. It was funny because there is no way in my life that I was able to observe such a scene. This is probably one of the reasons I enjoyed Housecraft because it doesn’t take itself too seriously (or is it? more about it later on) and you can do some crazy stuff with it.
The app also boasts real physics, and I enjoyed seeing things toppling over other objects and then on the floor. I’ve also found out that for some items like the sofa, you have the option to change its color.
So what’s the point of this app?
I’ve visited housecraftapp.com website and IĀ found that the company who developed Housecraft is looking for furniture companies to work with by either using their tools to add branded 3D models directly to Housecraft or help them make their own app using their technology.
Users can also save their own room layout which is a very helpful feature. You can play with different design ideas and see what works best for your house.
No doubt that Sirvo, the developer of this app has reached a milestone and made its app very popular. The question is how it can compete against those other home visualization apps that are more commercial oriented apps like Room Remix, IKEA Place app, and others?
I personally think that there is a room for partnership and making companies use this technology in order to give their customers a way to visualize their products.
Judging by the comments on the App Store, it seems that people really enjoyed it, the question is what’s next. How many times you can play around with this app until you had enough. As a simple sandbox app it entertaining and it has its nice unique features that I enjoyed playing with, but that’s about it.
I think it’s also a great app to showcase ARKit’s great capabilities for home decor visualization. That being said,Ā someday it has to be practical as well or no one will lose it as it will be swallowed by the tons of other ARKit apps that will be not less fun to play around with.
Overall, fun ARKit app, I had a good time with it.