New gaming peripheral promises the sense of smell?
As odd as some gaming devices might be (for example the Raven mouse, Orbita mouse or even the Ergodex DX1 keyboard), the experience can be a little underwhelming.
We'd put this down to simply poor games, since visual and auditory (not to mention physical feedback in the form of vibration) stimulation is usually enough to grip us, but what about smell?
Thanks to an intrepid bunch of engineers at Birmigham University, who have decided that we in fact need smell to really enjoy games, they've created a system that can do just that.
Using an intricate system of paraffin wax pots, each infused with a different smell, the scents are released and blown via a fan straight to the player when certain in-game events are triggered.
Take this quote from Developmag's look at the tech:
The boxed odour fan attached to the PC, known as a "scent delivery system" (SDS), has eight chambers to hold and mix over 100 compatible types of scented wax...The human body has five recognised senses; touch, taste, vision, smell and sound. Video games only fully address two of those senses, while force-feedback peripherals have fairly limited ways of capturing touch.
With use planned for military training simulators initially (and after all, what better way to become accustomed to the acrid gunsmoke than in a relatively safe environment), this has just as much use for games.
Who knows, by the time Half Life 3 rocks around we might be able to smell just what it's like to have a headcrab mount your face!
Issue: 106 | November, 2009