Computer scientists add smell to games
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/driving/article6162217.ece
Lengthy article, but very very interesting concept. Below is the opening paragraph, and some examples from the end of the article. Check it out.
Lengthy article, but very very interesting concept. Below is the opening paragraph, and some examples from the end of the article. Check it out.
Professor Bob Stone loves the smell of napalm in the morning. Hes less keen on raw sewage, burning vegetation and diesel exhaust, but at the click of a mouse any and all can be wafting through his office at Birmingham University. Its just one of the techniques the computer scientist is using to make video games more realistic. Stone is helping to develop technology likely to end up in home games consoles to create realistic smell effects. Players will experience the odours of, say, the racetrack or the battlefield. His research also has a more immediate goal: to train future recruits to the British military.
Mix your own
Biopacs SDS100 scent delivery system works with more than 100 pre-packaged aromas. Here are a few we mixed earlier:
Battleground
Scents available: weapons fire, gunpowder, burning rubber
Military encampment
Scents available: rubbish, lit cigarettes, whisky
Eau de Grand Prix
Scents available: race-car exhaust, leather glove, burning electrics
Soldiers homecoming
Scents available: coffee, apple pie, and, er, seduction
Replies
I think the only reason this keeps getting invented is to get a ton of investor cash, then cut and run. Just like the phantom, and several flying car projects being funded by people with more money than sense.
Dumb.
What will eventually make this work is direct nerve or brain stimulation to create virtual smells that will be just as real as the genuine article without any need for refills or mixing of random substances to form smells.
Its something to look forward to was work in wetware and virtual senses moves forward be its a ways off before this will ever be practical.
booze, women, and blunts
sounds interesting..
Next up, games that actually give you realistic pain!
Skip right over smell and get crackin on a holodeck!
Does no one see this as a realistic game implementation in the near (or far) future? I can understand the problems with requiring an additional piece of hardware (or whatever module that this system's scent-producing wax comes in), but surely this is a possibility. Maybe not in this mentioned form, but at some point. The evolution of 'the game experience' can not forever be based on visuals alone. Look at how audio immersion has affected users' experience. What used to be simple 8 bit audio has turned into fully orchestrated musical soundtracks and unique sound effects, not to mention surround sound speakers and headphones that can accurately mimic surround sound.
[edit] jacose, I had the same thought when it comes to a neurological method. Although it depends on the actual hardware or 'kit' released, you wouldn't have to worry about the wax or allergy issues, and definitely not filling up the office with the elegant scent of raw sewage and rotting zombie flesh.
I'll have to go back and try to find an article published about a science team creating a neurological-based method of 'tricking' the brain to feel certain emotions. One example they listed was the ability to synthesize the feeling of meeting God. From what I remember, the scientists were able to trick the brain so that the patient felt a combination of euphoria and what they described as 'divine presence'. I'll try to find that article.
Visuals = pleasing to the eye
Sound = pleasing to the ear
Feel = Using vibration controller feature... no comment
Taste = Not going there yet
annnnnd
Smell = rubbish, lit cigarettes, whisky, weapons fire, gunpowder, burning rubber, race-car exhaust, leather glove, burning electrics, etc etc = not pleasing
Those smells can be pure sex to other people
One thing to remember, it wont be accurate, as most sounds for games aren't accurate, they're made to sound cool, guns are made to be sound cool, cars are made to be sound cool in most games too,
so when you're playing that shooter the developers would cocktail together the most awesome smells only, not the rotting corpses or the sewage.
I'd say, if the device could become cheap, and work properly, it would be an interesting thing to add to an elderscrolls type game, where you 80% of the time walk around and smell flowers.
"I know -insert game here- is popular, but I just don't like the art style that much"
to...
"I know -insert game here- is popular, but I just don't like the simulated smell types very much. I'm less of a death and carnage person, more a fantasy flower scent-type."
Nor was I thinking, when playing Fallout 3, what an entire world of people who had never bathed in their whole lives smelled like.
How often does this happen, exactly?
so when you smell gunpowder, you know someone just duked it out in that place.
or maybe you can trace the bad guys by their sweaty armpits.
Dude...I'm not diggin that. Not at all
this wil give the burnt corpse smell everyone is fancy for