Swedish retail giant IKEA has ventured into the world of virtual reality (VR), launching its Virtual Reality Kitchen, IKEA VR Experience in an effort to transform the way people shop.

Released on Valve's game distribution platform Steam, in collaboration with HTC, the pilot enables customers to try new kitchen solutions before purchasing.

Tim Prevade, range manager for IKEA Australia said, "Australians are known for embracing the latest technology and innovations, so virtual reality has the potential to transform the way people interact with our products in the home. We look forward to hearing our customers' feedback on the experience as we continue to explore this space in the future."

IKEA said it had been working on various new technologies for the last few years, testing different digital tools before zeroing in on VR as one of the ways to move forward.

Also on Wednesday, the Australian Museum in Sydney, in partnership with Samsung, released two VR documentaries displaying the technology of London-based Alchemy VR and the unique voice of David Attenborough.

In a first outside of the UK, David Attenborough's First Life VR and David Attenborough's Great Barrier Reef Dive VR offers Samsung Gear VR wearers a 360 degree tour of the first creatures to occupy the earth and a tour of Australia's Great Barrier Reef respectively.

In March, Telsyte projected that the popularity of VR in Australia will accelerate this year, predicting the sale of 110,000 units in 2016 to start annual growth of more than 500,000 headsets per annum by 2020, with video game enthusiasts expected to pilot the trend.