Ears, eyes? The next VR games might be focusing on more of our senses than ever before!
Benji Li, who is a postdoctoral researcher with Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, says that sight and sound have been the staple of virtual reality, and recently, haptic feedback adds touch into the mix. He thinks that tasting and smelling could also be part of the future of VR: „The think about VR is its ability to allow the user to feel he/she is there, a phenomenon we call presence. We see greater influence of VR when users report higher levels of presence.”
Li and his research team at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore submitted a study, which examined how VR is capable of influencing a person’s eating habits – the study revealed that adding scent and taste to the experience „has an effect on human satiation,” Engadget reports. „”What if one day we can show you in VR, a piece of steak, with the smell and scent that goes along with it, and you cut it up and feel its tenderness, and you enjoy every bite of it?,” Li asks.
Vocktail already tries something similar: it tricks our senses with the help of light and smelling that the cup of tap water in our hand could taste differently. Also, Oculus Rift has an add-on called FeelReal (which you can preorder here), that allows us to bring smelling into VR. It comes with a set of seven cartridges each one offering a different smell, including ocean, jungle, fire, grass, powder, flowers, and metal.
No matter if we want it or not, smelling is coming to VR shortly!
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