Scent Peripherals

It's true. Most games would not need all 10,000 scents.

Probably something in the range of 25-50 would be enough for a single title. For some simple games, maybe less.

For home use maybe this would be overkill, but it could be interesting in a more controlled environment (like a theme-park ride).

I don't think an electromechanical scratching device would be any more efficient than one that stores scented liquid oils and deploys to the nose with a little fan. Scratching is a mechanical action with significant friction, could be loud enough to break immersion, and I don't see the storage efficiency advantage of scented paper.

There have been several product attempts into the market {Kaori Web (France Telecom), DigiScents (iSmell), P@D Aroma Generator (Thanko), Scent Dome (TriSenx), Dynamic Scent (Scentcom), GameSkunk (Sensory Acumen), etc.}, but most of them have fallen out of upkeep, or don't have a store. I would place this thread under Oculus Development > Input Devices, but there basically are no devices.

I think part of why this market has always been doomed was because it was always oriented for enhancing TV and monitor viewing, where immersion is limited to begin with, and the smell would have to be dispersed across larger areas, which makes it slower to change the smell. They have never made a marketable push, because it is only useful for VR, which had also never broken the marketability barrier.

Then again, the tide could be turned by tomorrow's watch-n-sniff Honey Boo Boo event. :)

I was independently thinking about this, and while I'm not interested in actually building it, I realized that there are really ready made components that you could use in inkjet printer cartridges for holding your scents and dispersing them. Given the number though, you'd probably want to put it in some kind of vest that points up, and then I imagined it'd be worth it to have them point to a center tube that would duct air up to your face that would include the relevant scent of the moment. Then of course based on your sensitivity to each scent, you'd need to calibrate it over time to get the intensity you wanted. But I could see some very awesome, and some very terrible applications of it, that would intensely improve the immersion of your games. Imagine Falkreath with the smell of pine, or any inn with the smell of roasting beef, Markarth with the musty smell of dry dusty stone, and the hike up to Windhelm with the faint odor of sulfur from the hot springs. Surely the worst would be Morthal with the nearby swamps, unless you run into some crypt with any recently dead, that would be foul, but so awesome for really experiencing the world. At the same time, there needs to be some moderation as well, you don't typically go around noticing your average scent in your daily life, so it would need to be subtle most of the time, which wouldn't happen initially.

Not really useful unless done properly. I think we should focus on vision, touch and 6-axis g force acceleration (to imitate the sense of standing, sitting, falling, and rotating). and finally add smell and taste when they will be possible. We pretty much got the hearing sense perfected. There are many more senses that can't be stimulated without a brain controlled interface though.