Gaming headset adds scents for immersion

Gaming headset adds scents for immersion
Gaming headset adds scents for immersion

"It smells like a car crash, burning tires," says Danel Zholzhanova, a PhD student at the University of Warwick, describing her experience with a prototype gaming headset equipped with a scent tube. This is not a real-life disaster, but a novel experiment at the intersection of gaming and sensory science.

On display as part of the University of Warwick's 60th anniversary celebrations, the multisensory driving simulation research is being led by Professor Alan Chalmers of the Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) who is investigating the use of olfactory stimuli in a virtual racing game scenario.

"In reality, you have the smell of the burning of the brakes and you know to take your foot off the pedal," Chalmers said. "So it's giving a real world stimulation, which then tells you what's happening."

The project is a collaboration with video game developers Hollywood Gaming, with the aim to create the next big thing in gaming.

The headset, designed to release specific odours such as 'machine oil' and 'burning rubber' at critical moments in the game, represents a push toward a more immersive and realistic gaming experience.

"The smell makes the experience quite different, a little bit scary even, and difficult to concentrate," Zholzhanova added about her experience with the scent-enhanced gaming setup.

Chalmers added that the key engineering challenge was delivering just enough scent to the user so that it wouldn't linger beyond a particular scene in the game or on your clothes.

"The big problem with any smell is if you pump smell into the environment, how do you get rid of it? That's the biggest challenge because your clothes end up stinking of it, the whole room stinks of it," he said.

Chalmers and his team have also developed a prototype device that tests people's sense of taste, which he believes could be used as an early screening tool for Alzheimer's disease.

The prototype is still under development by Chalmers and his team, but the hope is that such a device could become common in pharmacies for people to easily test.