Games primarily rely on impressions from seeing and hearing. However, a research team has presented how smell could be brought into gaming. But do you really want to smell your games in the future?
Anyone playing games on a PC or console today primarily perceives the impressions that can be seen and heard. The technology is constantly improving and becoming more extensive.
- Graphics are becoming more realistic, and with ray tracing, light and shadow are becoming more natural.
- With sound, you can now hear details like the rustling of individual leaves or the footsteps of your enemies.
VR takes it a step further and tries to place the player even more in the center of the game. With this technology, you only see the game and no longer your room or your desk where you are sitting.
For example, a VR MMORPG was so successful that even the servers crashed. This also shows that VR is no longer just a “niche.”
A small gadget makes it possible for you to smell games in VR
What is this device? The Universities of Stockholm and Malmö have developed a scent machine that can be controlled via a PC. This was reported by the online magazine analyticsinsight.net.
How does it work? The system consists of 4 separate valves, each connected to a channel. A fan in the middle sucks air into a pipe while it rotates. The four channels can be opened with varying strength and supplied with different scent mixtures by the player via the computer.
In their game, the player embarks on an exploration journey in a virtual wine cellar: Here, one can take wine glasses with different wines in hand. As soon as the player lifts the glass and holds it to their nose, the scent machine emits a fragrance that the user can then smell.
Game and source code are publicly accessible for everyone
Can you try this out? In principle, the source code and all instructions for the machine are freely available online. Theoretically, you can rebuild and try out the system yourself.
The Sensory Cognitive Interaction Laboratory, a research team in the Department of Psychology at Stockholm University, hopes that scented computer games can also be beneficial in other contexts.
What’s the benefit? The team behind the machine hopes that the possibilities of the scent machine will be recognized by more people. That’s why they have made the research results publicly available.
According to Jonas Olofsson, the head of the study team, “the new technology could offer those who, for example, have lost their sense of smell due to a Corona infection or other reasons, the opportunity to restore their sense of smell through a game-based training.”
What do you think? Do you believe that smell should also be incorporated into more games in the future, or are you quite happy if you don’t have to smell things like zombies or catacombs?
More news around VR in gaming: Meanwhile, more new gadgets for gaming are being introduced. However, one device has now become somewhat more expensive. As a result, the previously cheapest entry into VR gaming is no longer as affordable as it used to be:
