Japanese company wants to add smells to your VR experience

by Plamen Dimitrov / Jan 20, 2017, 7:51 AM

Japanese company wants to add smells to your VR experience

Ah, Japan – a nation that has always been famous for being a technological step ahead from the rest of the planet. The Japanese never cease to amaze us with their creativity, but sometimes this ingenuity can spawn certain inventions that are a bit too weird to the Western world.

Speaking of weird, a Japanese company is planning to take your VR experience to a whole new level. Their latest product - the VAQSO VR – is a small external device that can be attached to almost any pair of VR goggles available on the market, including the Oculus Rift, PlayStation VR and HTC Vive.

The gadget is about as big as a Snickers bar, and emits fragrances that are contained in swappable cartridges. The commercial build of the device will be able to load up to 5 of these cartridges, with many scents being planned in order to further immerse users in their virtual adventures. It will provide odors such as gun smoke in action scenes or first-person shooters, “the aroma of shampoo as a girl passes by” and the smells of nature in outdoor/fantasy games.

Amazingly, there are already several other gadgets that can compete with VAQSO in this new niche of the market, but they are a bit more... specialized. Erotic webcam site CamSoda recently introduced OhRoma, a VR-compatible scent mask that aims to enhance any porn one might watch with their helmet on with more than 30 erotic scents, but it doesn't end here!

The Nosulus Rift makes you wish for less truth in advertising.

Apparently, our minds and noses are about to get rocked by Ubisoft and the creators of South Park, as a new device will make its way to consumers worldwide when the latest South Park game “The Fractured But Whole” premieres. Called the Nosulus Rift, this gadget is a face mask that will stink things up while you play their latest title with the actual smell of farts. No, we're not kidding, look it up.

However, the company behind VAQSO VR hopes that its creation will have broader applications. Future generations of the device will be able to increase or reduce the smell in relation to how far you are from an object, in order to create a more immersive experience. The product is still in development, but is expected to become available sometime this year.

via CNET

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13 Comments

1. Joulukas

Posts: 115; Member since: Jun 05, 2013

Not a very difficult task, when most VR content only requires fish smell to be added

posted on Jan 20, 2017, 8:00 AM 2

2. Nathan_ingx

Posts: 4769; Member since: Mar 07, 2012

Like sh¡t, that will smell nice.

posted on Jan 20, 2017, 8:10 AM 0

3. nedimko_wot

Posts: 115; Member since: Oct 01, 2016

i already see some devs making farting game with this

posted on Jan 20, 2017, 8:13 AM 3

4. tunewar123

Posts: 17; Member since: Mar 17, 2016

VR PORN - The smell of loveeeeee, that will make you pukeee

posted on Jan 20, 2017, 11:55 AM 3

5. xondk

Posts: 1904; Member since: Mar 25, 2014

Interesting concept, but how would you effectively emulate enough smells for it to make sense, I mean take the 'fart' thing that was for South Park - Fractured But Hole, one smell, sure, for a time before you need to reload the cartridge, more then a limited number of smells? to get an actual range on it? seems impractical?

posted on Jan 20, 2017, 12:58 PM 0

6. Settings

Posts: 2943; Member since: Jul 02, 2014

Its not that hard. Read about olfactometers.

posted on Jan 20, 2017, 8:05 PM 0

8. xondk

I am referring not to recording them, figuring out what they are, this I know can be done :) I'm more thinking about how would you reproduce them to the person playing VR, currently you need to mix chemicals of some sort, and it can quickly become impractical.

posted on Jan 21, 2017, 11:17 AM 0

9. Settings

Whats so impractical about smelling VR?

posted on Jan 21, 2017, 9:47 PM 0

10. xondk

providing enough chemicals to cover enough smells, mounted on vr headset without weighing it down, since the chemicals are needed to trigger the scent in your nose? and of course it actually needing reloading every 10 minute? I have no idea how many chemicals are needed to cover enough scents, but at this point it is impractical.

posted on Jan 22, 2017, 2:01 PM 0

11. Settings

Why not just load scents needed by the game? If you would load all possible scents then thats cumbersome.

posted on Jan 22, 2017, 9:38 PM 0

12. xondk

dunno, but would then limit the amount of scents any given game could reproduce?

posted on Jan 22, 2017, 9:41 PM 0

13. Settings

I saw the implementation of this smell VR in Vive. It's only the nozzle that you will install on your headgear, plus the tube. The scent generator is located in the near the console.