Most VR environments make the use of sight and sound to simulate VR environments. Sight, sound and touch are widely focused on when it comes to developing VR technologies. Hence smell this is something mostly absent in VR. However, smell is essential to how humans perceive the real world and is closely associated with memory and emotion. Many people associate smell with a time, memory or an emotion. Smell is a key factor in increasing the level of immersion in a VR environment for a user. A user feels more immersed and present in a VR environment where the user can perceive smell than an environment without smell. Most popular VR headsets like HTC VIVE, Oculus do not come with a component or attachment to sense smell while using them.
Many companies have come up with devices and technology to incorporate smells into a virtual reality experience. Products like FeelReal, iSmell, Smell-O-Vision, Vasco odor emitting attachment and Olorama scents generator etc. have been prototyped or released into the market. Many of them failed to make an impact when trying to reproduce the smell in VR environment for various reasons. A lot of reasons contributed to their failure. But the product itself was technically challenged by the properties of the odor. It was very crucial to maintain the timing of the release of the odor so that it synchronizes with what's happening in the VR. It will not make sense if the odor reaches early or late to the user. Such issues can be avoided if the odor generator is close to the nose / face. Furthermore, the odor should not linger longer than the required time. This may cause confusion for the user. Staying any longer will result in mixture of odor with other new odor that comes.
Such issues were handled in Olorama scene Generator. The generator must store the odor and use it as and when required. The odors are generally stored in a liquid form in tiny cartridges. They are vaporized to emit the odor. The odor that was generated evaporates quickly enabling faster dispatch. This clears the air for the new scent. This can also prove to be bad idea when the scent needs to stay longer. The generator will keep on emitting the odor and use up the all the liquid in the cartridges. The generator is also capable of vaporizing and emitting the scent in short span. By giving appropriate messages and signals to the generator, it is possible to dispense a combination of scents to produce different scents. Number of cartridges that can be stored in Olorama is limited to 10. The application that uses this device should restrict itself to this limit or can produce new scents by combining these. Any new scents that needs to be introduced must replace the pre-existing scents.
The scents used by Olorama are natural and is 100% allergy free. By keeping it natural, the scent is made devoid any artificial chemicals which may affect the nostrils or breathing tract of the users. It also necessary to realize that neither the liquid nor the gas that is produced should be inflammable. This can pose a serious danger to user. As of now, BeSpoke the company that
generates the scents for Olorama has limited to a variety of 70 scents. Success of this technology is majorly dependent on the number of scents that are available in the market. Also, majorly on the number of the cartridges that can be kept on the device.
Though the device is not attached with any of the headset, it is still portable and is easy to install and use. This poses another disadvantage for usage. When the user starts moving around with the headset on, Device will be at one far end of the physical space. Hence the scent that is emitted by the device will be very less or negligible. The scent might even get evaporated before it reaches the user. It would be best if the device is always close to the user. With this device, it becomes necessary to keep it at multiple places around the physical location. This will increase the number of cartridges used and cost factor will increase tremendously depending on the number of devices in place.
As the device is not attached to the user alone, the scent coming out of the device can be felt by everyone who are within the range of the device. This can turn out be an awful or pleasant experience for others depending on what kind of scent is experienced. Any foul smell from the device will turn out to be a negative experience for others who will start having second thoughts on using the device again. This will be a big blow for the success of the device.
Comparison with similar Devices
1. FeelReal: It’s a multi-sensory VR mask. Apart from odor it can also produce wind flow, hot air and mist. They have very limited space for odor generator that can hold not more than 7 cartridges. Since it’s a mask, it is very close to the face and does not have the above-mentioned issues.
2. Smell-O-Vision: a system that released odor during the projection of a film so that the viewer could "smell" what was happening in the movie. It was designed for a closed-door audience where everyone wants to have the same experience. It makes sense to keep device away and emit the odor to the entire room.
3. iSmell: a small device that can be connected to a computer through a Universal serial bus (USB) port and powered using any ordinary electrical outlet. It would work as an independent device and does not need VR headset.
3D-Rudder
3DRudder is a joystick kind of device that is controlled by the feet. The device is a round board where the user can easily lay his feet being comfortably seated. The board has an USB cable to connect it to all the most recent computers. After a quick set-up the device is ready, the user can now use it to send inputs with his feet. It is not just a VR platform device, it is a multi-use foot controller. It can mimic activities of the momulti-use, movement keys of the board and joystick while playing normal games.
There are four possible usage modes and a few configurations available:
1. Mouse Mode: In this configuration, you can use 3DRudder as a real mouse, performing all the actions you usually do with your hands such as shifting the pointer, clicking, right clicking and double clicking with your feet. To shift the mouse, you just have to tilt the device down towards the desired direction and to perform clicking you can exploit the foot-controlled buttons already present on the 3dRudder board.
2. Keyboard Mode: It allows you to bind few keyboard buttons to 3dRudder axis movements, each axis can have two key bindings based on tilting intensity so that you can have up to 8 key bindings.
3. Joystick Mode: This mode lets your 3dRudder emulate a foot joystick with up to 4 axes. 4. Keyboard + Mouse Mode: This is the only non-customizable configuration, so you may want
to carefully verify that the keys assigned to 3dRudder match the game-key set up. With Keyboard + Mouse mode you can exploit mouse and keyboard features at the same time for example by binding the WASD moving combination of the keyboard and the mouse buttons.
Critique Evaluation
Just like any new device takes time to get hold of, 3DRudder also consumes its own sweet time before it can be appropriately used with minimal errors. This is because legs have been very less
used for gaming / movement purpose. Bringing the co-ordination between eye and legs can be more difficult when compared to hand-eye co-ordination. Another reason, it takes time to learn the device is that some interactions and movements are not that intuitive. For instance, since moving backward/forward and left/right is intuitively done by tilting the board in the desired direction, moving in the third dimension (up / down) would be a problem. In 3DRudder, to move up and down you have to push two different buttons, one with each foot, something that you can easily forget or mistake.
Another issue related to this feature of moving up and down is that the VR applications do not require the user to move up and down. All applications are built with the idea that the user has to move in at most two dimensions at any point of time. Also, the third dimension (vertical) movement is usually done by looking at that direction and doing the climbing action. Hence it does not make sense in reality to have movement for the third direction. Also, 3DRudder is not efficient in making cross angled movements combining multiple dimensions. Sometimes the application might not want the user to make vertical movement, but this device will create breaches in the wall to move in not intended direction causing the bug in the app.
Most of the time, virtual environment spaces are designed considering that the user is moving in a real room with a fixed range, 3dRudder technology revolutionizes these concepts since using it you can pass through either walls or the floor itself, resulting in game cheating. This factor, that can be seen either as good or bad since sometimes cheating is fun but for sure it makes games boring, has also an impact on VR motion sickness issue. Apart from cheating factor, the device will require change in all VR applications to allow movement indefinitely in all directions instead of restricting it as it happens now. In addition, some applications may require the user to jump or crouch down, it is not clear if this movements are allowed, and how intuitively they are mapped to inputs of the 3dRudder board.
A foot-powered controller is very annoying and can seriously affect usability. When the user is playing, and the game is really addictive, the user tends to move without their conscience and 3dRudder board does not stay fixed in its place. This is a very grave drawback for a piece of hardware that claims to help the player in getting less tired and more comfortable in playing VR games and running VR applications. On the other hand, 3dRudder can also guarantee a lot of benefits and can considerably improve your VR experience.
Though some controls are not that intuitive, but others like moving backward/forward and left/right are very intuitive. Furthermore, since feet are those part of the body that manages the movement, a controller that allows you to move in a VR using them adds something to the experience and for sure makes it more complete. This aspect has also a huge impact on how the Virtual Reality game is immersive, in fact, having to move actively and rapidly your feet to move into the game, will for sure increase this factor. To contribute to that immersive experience the 3dRudder controller is progressive, meaning that the movement does depend on how much you are tilting the board towards a specific direction, giving you a further measure to the in-game experience.
The device effectively reduces the physical space required by the VR application to almost 0. The player can sit and use the VR like any other normal application. It does not matter whether you play in a small storage room or in huge empty loft it doesn't change anything, you'll have the same experience. This gives an innovative solution to the truly annoying problem of VR headset technologies but at the same time it also critically emulates if the user would prefer either to be seated or move everywhere within the mentioned physical boundary. This would totally be a personal choice of the user. Someone could find more immersive the former, someone else the latter, it is something very changing based on the player, the application that user is running and other factor such as fatigue.
