Night at the VR Shopping Museum

Illustration of a virtual gallery wall with three framed exhibits showing a sofa, a bag and a shoe, a shopping cart and glowing floor waypoints, next to a blue VR headset with a mint check mark and a label reading 5 exhibits, 2019

Updated September 2026

This post first ran in 2019, when we were running a set of virtual and mixed reality side projects at Pasilobus. We've kept the story of the project below, tidied up, and added what's changed since. The short version: headset shopping never went mainstream, but the idea behind it did. Shoppers want to see a product in space before they buy it. Today that happens with 3D models and augmented reality on an ordinary product page.

Why we built a VR shopping museum

Online shopping has always had one big gap compared with a shop: you can't pick things up. A flat screen makes it hard to judge size, shape and how something would look in your home, and the connection between a customer and a brand rarely gets built through a two-dimensional page alone.

In 2019, immersive technologies like virtual reality looked like one way to close that gap, letting people experience a product in a space rather than scroll past a photo. Several big retailers were experimenting, so we built a small exhibit to capture where things stood.

The e-commerce VR museum

The E-commerce VR Museum was a mobile VR app for developers and investors in e-commerce: a small virtual gallery showing five VR shopping experiences, each with an information poster and a video. You walked around by following waypoints on the floor. The five exhibits were Shopify VR, Buy+ (from Alibaba), eBay, IKEA VR and The Apartment by The Line.

You can try the experience with a cardboard viewer using the video below.

The museum in cardboard VR mode.

How the exhibit was put together

  • An info canvas to start. The experience opened with a panel explaining what you were about to see. The first version was text only. Adding a start button that dismissed the panel worked better, because people only needed to read it once.
  • Waypoints to move around. After the intro, waypoints appeared in front of you. There was no fixed order, but the layout nudged you from left to right.
  • Floors that signpost content. A different floor material marked each info panel, so you could tell from a distance where there was something to see.
  • Shopping carts as set dressing. A few carts around the room kept the space on theme.

Here's the full walk-through:

A complete tour of the five exhibits.

What changed since 2019

Headset shopping stayed niche. Most people shop on a phone, and few want to put on a headset to buy a lamp. The part that stuck was simpler: letting shoppers look at a product from every angle, and see it in their own room through their phone's camera.

How immersive shopping works on a Shopify store today: upload a 3D model as a GLB or USDZ file to the product's media, customers spin it in a 3D viewer on the product page, and on a phone they can place it in their own room using the camera FROM A 2019 MUSEUM TO TODAY 3D on your product page 01 · UPLOAD Add a 3D model to media GLB or USDZ, up to 500 MB. Big files are optimized for you. .GLB 02 · VIEW Spin it on the product page Shopify's own themes support 3D. 03 · PLACE See it in their own room The phone's camera puts the product in the customer's space. No headset needed.
The practical version of VR shopping today: a 3D model on the product page, and augmented reality through the customer's phone.

On Shopify, that's built in:

  • 3D models are a standard product media type. Upload GLB or USDZ files (up to 500 MB) alongside your photos and videos. Files over 15 MB are optimized automatically so they load faster.
  • Your theme probably supports it already. All of Shopify's own Online Store 2.0 themes and the Horizon family display 3D models, and many third-party themes do too.
  • Customers can place the product in their space. The model uses the device's camera and screen to show the product in the customer's surroundings, viewable from any angle.
Worth knowing3D pays off most where size, shape or fit in a room decides the sale: furniture, lighting, decor, bags, footwear, gadgets. For a T-shirt, good on-body photos do more. If you don't have 3D files, Shopify's help centre lists partners who make them, or you can commission models from your product designer.

If you're weighing up richer product pages generally, our guides on editing product images and photography and when one image per collection page isn't enough are good next reads. For a look at where shopping technology is heading now, see your Shopify store is now inside ChatGPT.