Meant to be Seen

Has anyone tried it? I'm going to guess probably not, or not many. I have not. I know there have been some failed devices that aim to represent various smells, but I'd like to see if anyone has first hand experience with any of them. Did they fail because the obvious market for them (VR) is not here yet? Or did they fail because everything pretty much smelled like a lemon-zested armpit?

I believe smell-o-vision is already being used for Military VR, PTSD in particular. Smell is tied very strongly to memories, such as the smell of a burning Humvee.

I remember seeing a company at GDC2012 selling a scent based peripheral. It had carriages of all the smells you wanted to experience, kinda like a printer. (car rubber, roses, grass, fart?)

It was amusing but since it was limited to a predetermined scents it seemed limited in its current form.

@RoadKillGrill

Do you know if that peripheral used premixed chemicals (or whatever), or did it mix them dynamically, from predetermined formulas?

@FingerFlinger
I think it was from predetermined formulas. I might have a card somewhere. Sorry I can't remember the name

I remember reading about 20 years back in a VR book that there was no theory of smell (at that time at least) that would allow the mixing of smells in an arbitrary way, like is done with the primary colors. I think if they can crack that, it would be great. Funny to read in Ready Player One though that most people disabled smell sensing, as people used it to inflict nasty smells on people

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=531DlKqs9M4[/youtube]

Good vid. Shame it doesn't seem like we are any further towards universally simulating smell. One cartridge per smell would be quite limiting, but still have many applications. Smell is great for stimulating memories, so it could probably add significantly to immersion.

edit: just got to the end, well done interview Neil!

Thanks for posting that, Cyber.

What was your impression of the technology, Neil? Did you find that the scents were fairly accurate? Were they overwhelming/underwhelming?

I can definitely imagine becoming more emotionally connected to a VR experience because of the sense of smell. And 12 scents may be enough to make a real impact.

Now the pricing is a little scary. While there would be some overlap from VR experience to VR experience, you would most likely need to purchase scents for each new game or sim. If you need to purchase 8 new scents for a particular game that is $160. I would probably create my own scent cartridges if I had one of these.