Published April 19, 2021 - Gizmodo
Is There VR for Senses Other Than Sight?
Daniel Kolitz
“The amygdala—the part of the brain that manages emotion and memory—is linked to smell. This is why smells can be so powerful. It is not trivial to incorporate smells in VR, as the chemicals required to create scents can linger or mingle with other scents. Examples however have been games where sea scents have been used when the player is near the sea or in a forest.”
“A new olfactory display company based in the States, OVR, has developed an innovative scent delivery system that clips to the bottom of most of the popular virtual reality headsets (HTC Vive, Oculus Quest, etc.); I believe their system can currently handle up to nine smells. We’re hoping to work with them this year to bring realistic smells to our 17th century “Virtual Mayflower” demo, so that users can smell just how bad Plymouth was in those days when the Pilgrims departed for the New World!”
The goal of virtual reality is to create realistic experiences that allow us to become immersed in a different location, time period, or event using VR technology. To achieve this goal, VR technology must stimulate our main senses - our sense of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch - for our brains to interpret what we are experiencing as real. So far, our current VR technology targets our sense of sight and sound, and while this makes for cool VR experiences, it doesn't necessarily make for realistic ones. Recently, companies have been working on incorporating our other senses into VR technology to increase its efficiency and accuracy. OVR Technology is one of these companies. Using olfactory technology, OVR Technology is working to target our sense of smell in VR in ways that stimulate our memories as well as mimic the scent patterns we would experience in the real world!
