The idea of smell-o-vision, or sniffing what’s happening on TV or movies right in front of you, was first introduced in 1939, but it didn’t achieve much enthusiasm when it was released. . The scent was sent through pipes to each seat in the theater and released by the projectionist using a control panel. However, when the scent is released, the pipe makes a hissing sound that distracts the audience, and the scent takes several seconds to reach the moviegoer’s nose, causing them to miss the scene that the scent was supposed to accompany. There was also.
Now, a product called Gamecent is making the same claim for video games. The device uses artificial intelligence and replaceable scent cartridges, allowing gamers to experience the scents of burning rubber, gunfire, explosions, and more for just $150. This includes his six basic scents. (Additional charges will apply if you require additional scents.)
Of course, Smell-O-Vision was a failure, and it’s unclear whether there’s a market for pumping scents like “zombie” and “blood” into people’s living rooms. But the company’s founders are betting on its potential and plan to expand into movies.
“Smell sticks in our long-term and short-term memory more strongly than any other human sense,” Gamecent CEO Dean Finnegan told The Daily Beast. “At first they don’t know why, but then they realize it’s related to emotions, the feeling you get when you smell something. They also have other things to do with things like sight and hearing. It saves a lot more than that.”
Gamescent device. The device uses AI to help detect, tune, and associate sounds with the spread of scents.
game cent
Gamescent sent me one of their devices to test various video games on the PlayStation 5, including sci-fi bugs and robot murders. helldiver 2A luxurious and fantastic world. baldur’s gateand even the high seas of adventure. skull and bones.
The results were mixed, and the only truly memorable scent was the one that lingered on the couch.
stinky history
The original Smell-O-Vision scent trigger was a timestamp within the movie that corresponded to a specific scent. Decades later, in the 1990s, there was a concept introduced in computers called iSmell. It emitted scents associated with desktop websites through a physical shark-like fin that could be connected via USB.
The company behind iSmell ultimately failed despite raising $20 million in funding in the late ’90s. It turns out that people don’t want to smell their website. Today, video games are one of the largest industries in the world. The AI boom has brought emerging technology to everything, and Gamecent is incorporating it into its products.
The device uses AI to help detect, tune, and associate sounds with the spread of scents. According to Nate Parker, Gamecent’s vice president of marketing, the company builds its models by feeding them various sound effects from many different video games and movies from sound digital libraries used by video game developers. He is said to be training.
“Thirty minutes after finishing my Gamecent experiment, I picked up my coffee and took a sip, and the plastic top tasted like smoke, and not in a good way. ”
“We’re training the AI based on that,” he told The Daily Beast. “So if you’re playing something that has guns in it, firing the gun releases gun odor. It’s really as simple as that.”
These libraries include, for example, hundreds of gunshots, the sound of leaves and branches rustling in the wind, and even the sounds of birds chirping and waves. These sounds were fed into Gamecent’s AI to train it to respond to environmental stimuli and emit associated scents when it detects them.
Rather than a complex system like Sora, OpenAI’s text-to-video project, Gamecent’s AI is meant to do one thing: train sounds and associate sounds with scents. This narrow focus makes the system relatively simple.
For comparison, if game developers want to incorporate scents on their own, they will need to code things like scent triggers into the game they are creating. This is too much of a burden for developers. This is because it adds a whole other layer of work. Integration.
Gamecent also plans to launch virtual reality products and products that integrate with movies. Still, there is skepticism about whether a market for this product will develop.
“If I were to list 20 things I want, [in a gaming product] Christian Hammond, a computer science professor at Northwestern University and director of Northwestern’s Center for Safety Improvement in Machine Intelligence, told the newspaper. beast.
“Whether it’s body sensing, whether it’s haptics, these are all on the list of things that people can walk through that we’re trying to do to make those experiences more realistic,” Hammond added. . “Odor is one of them, but again it’s towards the bottom of the list.”
road with less smell
Setting up the Gamescent unit took two hours of trial and error. The Gamecent unit includes a Bluetooth-connected “smell box” and an adapter that passes between your TV and your game console. It’s also not exactly plug-and-play, as you have to download and register a mobile app.
Once I set it up, the results were hit and miss. For example, gunshots, explosions, etc. helldiver 2 was fired, but there was a delay of about 45 seconds after the first shot. If you’ve played the game, you probably know that many Scenes of gunfire and explosions.
The smell was too strong. It wasn’t a pleasant smell, but it wasn’t as unpleasant as I expected either. However, this product uses essential oils as a diffusion mechanism, so the scent will stick to things. Half an hour after finishing her Gamecent experiment, she picked up her coffee and took a sip, only to discover that the plastic top tasted like smoke, and not in a good way.
Gamescent comes with replaceable scent cartridges, allowing gamers to experience the scents of burning rubber, gunfire, explosions, and more for just $150. This includes his six basic scents. (Additional charges will apply if you require additional scents.)
game cent
Other in-game events triggered scents that weren’t necessarily expected.When you play the popular car meets soccer game rocket leaguePressing the pedal triggers a “stormy” scent (a bit like a sea spray scented candle if it had been decomposed), as opposed to the “racing car” scent of exhaust and tires. I did. After burning rubber, I could smell the “racing car” smell, but it didn’t happen automatically.
Hammond may be interested in combining scents and games in the future, but he’s not sure he can even see that far ahead. “I don’t know if I want my living room to smell like gunshots,” Hammond said. “Is there any industry interest in something this big? I don’t think so.”
So only time will tell whether Gamecent takes off or follows the path of iScent before it and Smell-O-Vision before it. But if my experience is any indication, history may not repeat itself, but it may certainly smell the same.
