Researchers from ITMO&rsquo;s Faculty of Nanoelectronics together with their colleagues from the Lebedev Physical Institute, D. Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology of Russia, and the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI have conducted a study that showed that nanolattices possess high spectral selectivity. Their layers can be used as color filters for specific wavelength ranges, and one glass plate can contain records of up to six layers. Using this technology, the scientists were able to implement dispersive birefringent filters, which have multiple applications. For instance, they can be used to create AR/VR color displays or novel biochemical sensors for bacterial analysis.<h2 dir="ltr" id="isPasted">All in one</h2>For two years, the <a href="https://news.itmo.ru/en/science/photonics/news/9811/" target="_blank">researchers</a> have been modeling, designing, and testing a wide range of integral optical elements to build a waveguide holographic periscope, an essential part of next-gen AR/VR glasses. Current headsets tend to limit a user&rsquo;s field of view, while smart glasses can complement the virtual space and inform users about surrounding objects and environment.In order to create such a device, scientists have to address a number of issues associated with its creation: for instance, to figure out how to transmit a color image via glasses. For that to happen, the researchers have <a href="https://news.itmo.ru/en/science/photonics/news/10123/" target="_blank">improved</a> a laser-initiated microplasma (LIMP) glass-processing method that allows them to create laser beam converters for the application of submicron periodic structures. After that, the team applied laser writing to obtain bulk periodic structures inside a glass with modified refractive index. Their next step was to create submicron diffraction gratings on a single glass plate, which will input and output AR/VR images via diffracted orders.<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1652319436706-ezgif-1-0d53f13b63.gif" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">Writing of integrated elements inside a glass. Video courtesy of the researchers&nbsp;<blockquote id="isPasted">&ldquo;We aim to develop the basics of using laser writing of integrated elements in photonic materials. Current sets of optical components (a mirror, a light source, filters, converters, etc,) are so massive that they occupy the entire optical table. We, in turn, want to create compact optical integrated circuits that can fit in the palm of a user, also called chip-scale devices. For instance, we record light-transmitting and selectively reflective elements on a glass matrix at several levels in 3D. Such a technology is compact and protected from external threats&rdquo; comments Roman Zakoldaev, a researcher at ITMO&rsquo;s Faculty of Nanoelectronics and an author of the paper.</blockquote><h2 dir="ltr">Research process</h2>The research involved several teams. The first team was in charge of direct laser writing in optical materials, the second one measured the morphological and physical properties of the produced micro- and nanostructures, and the third worked on the theoretical modeling of physical and optical processes.The first stage of the study included an investigation of direct laser writing of wide-ranging optical materials, such as quartz, multicomponent and nanoporous glasses, and calcium fluoride. The researchers made use of both materials already used in production and the promising ones. Among the latter are nanoporous matrices, which are developed and used by <a href="https://news.itmo.ru/en/science/new_materials/news/9883/" target="_blank">ITMO scientists</a>. These media are used in laser writing because they help increase the efficiency of phase incursion within a periodic bulk structure with submicron periods.&nbsp;<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1652319489668-1256302.jpg" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">Alexey Rupasov studies the morphology of nanolattices with a period of 390 nm for further modeling. Photo courtesy of the researchers&nbsp;Then, the researchers tested different laser writing modes in quartz glass. By experimenting with the duration of femtosecond laser pulses, fluence, and the wavelength of laser radiation, they learned that such characteristics as phase incursion and light scattering affect a spectral range of the resulting filters. In other words, the scientists discovered laser writing modes, which allowed them to obtain structures with the highest phase incursion and the lowest light scattering.<h2 dir="ltr">For both physics and biochemistry</h2>As a result, the researchers were able to identify a relationship between phase incursion and the modes of laser writing in quartz glass. Phase incursion is a change of the refractive index in quartz glass due to the formation of periodic structures with various refractive indices (glass-air). These zones display a relatively high phase incursion (up to 166 degrees) per layer, which makes it close to a half-wave plate. The discovered modes make it possible to implement any phase optical element inside a glass. Due to the high phase incursion, these structures get colorized with birefringence colors when placed between polarizers.<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1652319521967-1256301.jpg" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">Birefringence regions inside quartz glass in crossed and parallel polarizers. Photo courtesy of the researchers&nbsp;<blockquote id="isPasted">&ldquo;Multilayer writing makes it possible to create dispersive birefringent filters in a given spectral range, which paves the way for future compact sensors that will be based on the principles of integrated optics and will include the spectral analysis function. While the modern market does have dispersive birefringent filters, they are still separate optical devices. And we are working our way to offer a single glass plate that will integrate all these filters in one plate. Since our study is fundamental, we prepared a model, which showed us that our technology can be used to record multilayer structures in the visible spectral range,&rdquo; explains Alexey Rupasov, a researcher at ITMO&rsquo;s Faculty of Nanoelectronics and an author of the research.&nbsp;</blockquote>The results obtained provide a vital framework for radiation processing in AR devices, in which images are generated using three RGB coordinates. Diffraction gratings will help ensure input and output of radiation at various wavelengths. In the future, there might be a single glass plate with three types of periodic structures, which will adjust the radiation to RGB wavelengths and colorize the images.&nbsp;<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1652319546675-1256300.jpg" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">The image of dispersive filters, the cell transmission spectrum, and a layout of a diagnostic microfluidic chip. Illustrations from the article published in Laser Physics Letters&nbsp;The team also proposed a concept and a design of an integrated biochemical sensor for bacterial analysis. The suggested idea can replace the existing dispersive birefringent filters, which can only analyze wavelengths separately, by offering an opportunity to conduct all studies using a single lab-on-a-chip &ndash; a glass surface exposed to polarized light. The technology will include an internal or an external microfluidic chip, within which there&rsquo;ll be liquids with a detectable substance, such as bacteria. Each of these substances respond to a specific spectral range and a wavelength. On top of that, they can absorb light or fluoresce. The reactions show what is happening inside the chip.<hr><a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1612-202X/ac6806/meta" target="_blank">Reference</a>: Sergey Kudryashov, Pavel Danilov, Alexey Rupasov, Mikhail Smayev, Nikita Smirnov, Vladimir Kesaev, Andrey Putilin, Michael Kovalev, Roman Zakoldaev and Sergey Gonchukov. Direct Laser Writing Regimes for Bulk Inscription of Polarization-Based Spectral Microfilters and Fabrication of Microfluidic Bio/Chemosensor in Bulk Fused Silica (Laser Physics Letters, 2022).Translated by <a href="https://news.itmo.ru/en/profile/61/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Marina Belyaeva</a> and originally published by <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://news.itmo.ru/en/&source=gmail&ust=1652405976196000&usg=AOvVaw0iY5hMnJ3kgyjjWceggIw1" href="https://news.itmo.ru/en/" target="_blank">ITMO.NEWS</a>

Written micro- and nano-periodic structures inside a glass. Photo courtesy of the researchers

Researchers have conducted a study that showed that nanolattices possess high spectral selectivity. Their layers can be used as color filters for specific wavelength ranges, and one glass plate can contain records of up to six layers.

Researchers Explore Direct Laser Writing of Nanolattices

This article was discussed in our <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.wevolver.com/profile/the.next.byte&source=gmail&ust=1652444195353000&usg=AOvVaw1ZJZfTq5yCi6Etg2CyHBGt" href="https://www.wevolver.com/profile/the.next.byte" id="isPasted" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Next Byte podcast</a>.&nbsp;<iframe height="200px" width="100%" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" seamless="" src="https://player.simplecast.com/38d951d5-2bab-4386-8f9c-2407a412e902?dark=false" class="fr-draggable" data-gtm-yt-inspected-11="true" data-lf-yt-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true"></iframe>The full article will continue below.<hr>The app technology is designed for online shoe retailers to offer to their customers, to provide accurate fitting of different styles of shoe and the opportunity to see how the shoes will look on the shopper&rsquo;s feet. This should lead to less footwear being returned. There is a huge cost in returns, both monetary and environmental. Many shoe retailers make very little revenue from online sales due to the high rate of returns, so the aim of this app is to change this.&nbsp;Professor Roberto Cipolla and his team Dr James Charles and PhD student Ollie Boyne from the Machine Intelligence group have created the app working in collaboration with Giorgio Raccanelli and the team at <a href="https://snapfeet.io/en/" target="_blank">Snapfeet</a>. &nbsp;The Snapfeet app allows the customer to wear the shoes virtually via their phone thanks to Augmented Reality (AR) and find their perfect shoe fit in a few moments.Snapfeet creates, in realtime, an accurate 3D copy of the user&rsquo;s feet. In a few seconds it is possible to make a 3D model of both feet, simply by taking a few mobile phone photographs from different viewpoints.Using the user&rsquo;s foot shape and comparing it to the shoe geometry, Snapfeet is then able to recommend the correct size for each type of shoe, communicating to the user the degree of comfort that can be achieved in the different parts of the foot: toe, instep, heel and sole.&nbsp;Giorgio Raccanelli says &ldquo;You download the Snapfeet app, register, take a few pictures all the way around the foot, and a 3D model of the foot will appear, allowing you to immediately start shopping. The application automatically compares the three dimensional image of the foot with the chosen shoe style, showing you how it will fit, or will directly suggest a style that is most suited to your foot shape.&rdquo;Snapfeet have their first big customers in <a href="https://www.hugoboss.com/uk/app/" target="_blank">Hugo Boss</a> and Golden Goose. Snapfeet&rsquo;s parent company, Trya, began by licensing novel photogrammetry software from Professor Cipolla&rsquo;s group in 2011 via Cambridge Enterprise.&nbsp;The original photogrammetry technology used photos with a calibration pattern. After taking these photos they are uploaded to a server and a multi-view stereo algorithm developed at Cambridge found multiple point correspondences and generated a 3D model that explains all the different view points and locates the cameras in world space. This was state of the art for reconstruction accuracy back in 2011.Since 2019 Professor Cipolla&rsquo;s team have been working with Snapfeet to evolve the original photogrammetry technology into a mobile phone app which reconstructs the 3D foot shape live on the phone and without the need for any calibration pattern and to correctly size and visualise shoes in AR.&nbsp;Below is a video of the app in action building a 3D copy of the foot, size suggestions using machine learning and realtime AR to visualise the suggested size on the&nbsp;feet.<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/alDQ9rOPS8s?&wmode=opaque&rel=0&enablejsapi=1&origin=https://www.wevolver.com" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable" data-lf-yt-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" style="width: 766px; height: 408px;" data-gtm-yt-inspected-11="true" id="250411110"></iframe>The original photogrammetry software was very accurate to 1mm but it was slow and hard to process. Accuracy was there but usability was not. It also did not exploit any knowledge of the object it was trying to reconstruct.The team looked at how to make it faster and much more user friendly and the idea was born to do it all on a mobile phone with no calibration pattern and no processing on a server. They were able to exploit exciting new developments in machine learning and powerful processors on modern mobile phones.&ldquo;We were able to exploit new developments in machine learning (deep learning) for recognising 3D objects and the advanced sensors and powerful processors on modern mobile phones to run the reconstruction algorithms in real-time on the phone. In summary we can combine a&nbsp;parametrised foot model and novel deep learning algorithms for recognising curves and surfaces allowing&nbsp;us to run the 3D reconstruction algorithm in real-time on the device.&rdquo; Professor Cipolla.They used a parameterised foot model that has been learned from lots of 3D scans of feet using the original photogrammetry technology. The 3D foot model that the app builds can be rendered in any graphics engine to visualise what it looks like. The shape of the foot can be altered and is controlled using 10 different parameters that are learnt with machine learning. The objective is to find out which of these parameters produce a 3D foot that best matches the user. The &lsquo;master&rsquo; foot model is called a &lsquo;prior&rsquo; short for prior knowledge about what feet look like. The app user still takes multiple images around the foot but instead of building point clouds (as in photogrammetry) the app uses machine learning to predict the higher level features that control the shape of the foot. The benefits are that the app user needs to take less photos, the returned foot model has less artefacts and the process is more robust should there be errors during a scan. The model is also much quicker to produce thanks to the real-time Deep Learning element of the app.&nbsp;The team have just released the new version of the app that can do everything on the mobile device. The server is no longer needed.Talking about the app James Charles says: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve always had difficulties with getting shoes of the correct size. I dislike the try on process in shops and the environmental impact of ordering lots of shoes online was a big concern for me. However, before this app there really was no other option. So, I&rsquo;m highly motivated in solving this problem and think we already have pretty good solution.&rdquo;Initially when the user opens the app there is a calibration phase where the user begins tracking the camera using the latest AR features on mobile phones. On an iOS phone that is AR Kit and on an Android phone it is AR Core, they use the same set of routines that an interior design app would use to map a room and represent the physical space in graphic form.&nbsp;During the calibration phase the phone camera is being tracked. The app builds upon AR technology to track the camera and calculate how far it is moving, it also detects the foot and the floor providing a good idea of world space. The app knows where the phone is to within 2mm accuracy and it is all done within a few seconds of loading the app.&nbsp;As the phone moves around certain key points of interest on the foot are detected to help determine the foot length and width, then a 3D mesh is created from these measurements and the model is then overlaid over the user&rsquo;s foot in AR so that they can visually validate if it is correct.This is another key step and different to the competition. There are apps on the market that can also validate model reconstruction in this manner but they do not allow you to actively adjust the model. Snapfeet allows you to adjust the model in realtime and then immediately obtain the 3D model of your foot on the phone itself with no need for the server.There are 3 machine learning foot algorithms in play. One is building the parameterised foot model; the second is the machine learning that recovers the parameters of the model from multi-view images as you move the mobile phone around. &nbsp;Finally there is a third machine learning algorithm within the app that compares the 3D foot model against all the shoe shapes, or &ldquo;lasts&rdquo;, that the customer is interested in and will then return a size of those shoes which will best fit the user&rsquo;s foot. This is the virtual try on.When manufacturers build a shoe they build a shoe last which is a solid model of the inside of the shoe. Around the shoe last they create the shoe design. The shoe last along with the material used to create the shoe determines the size and comfort level that someone is going to have when they put their foot into that shoe.The algorithm will take the foot model and digitally place it inside all the shoes that you are interested in and give you a comfort score. You are then able to render a virtual shoe onto your feet using the AR. The app also detects where the legs/trousers are so that it can get the correct occlusion effect, using machine learning to capture the tracking of the foot.The app also uses AR once you have recovered your foot shape so the user can get the feel you should get when you try the shoe on. The AR element of the app then allows the user to see what the shoes will look like on their foot and whether they go well with a particular outfit.Snapfeet have generously funded a PhD studentship enabling Ollie Boyne to extend the research in modelling feet from photographs.The app is now live on the App Store and is being used and tested by many shoe vendors to help reduce their returns from online sales. <a href="https://snapfeet.io/en/snapfeet-en/" target="_blank">Download the app</a> and try it on your own feet.

Snapfeet is a new mobile phone app that shows how well shoes will fit based on the 3D shape of the user’s foot. It also offers a simple augmented reality (AR) visualisation of what the shoes will look like on the feet.

Computer vision for virtual footwear fitting and shoe size suggestion

This article was discussed in our <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.wevolver.com/profile/the.next.byte&source=gmail&ust=1652834752670000&usg=AOvVaw0nokl6Vw0qFseoqBb6ekTp" href="https://www.wevolver.com/profile/the.next.byte" id="isPasted" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Next Byte podcast</a>.&nbsp;<iframe height="200px" width="100%" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" seamless="" src="https://player.simplecast.com/86de3e57-5b39-45b4-aac4-c0a5d3bb3456?dark=false" class="fr-draggable" data-lf-yt-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true"></iframe>The full article will continue below.<hr>Cornell Tech researchers have developed a mixed-reality (XR) driving simulator system that could lower the cost of testing vehicle systems and interfaces, such as the turn signal and dashboard.Through the use of a publicly available headset, virtual objects and events are superimposed into the view of participants driving unmodified vehicles in low-speed test areas, to produce accurate and repeatable data collection about behavioral responses in real-world driving tasks.<img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNjUxMTkzMDU0NDA0LTA0MjhfY2FyMV8wLmpwZyIsImVkaXRzIjp7InJlc2l6ZSI6eyJ3aWR0aCI6OTUwLCJmaXQiOiJjb3ZlciJ9fX0=" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">Doctoral students Frank Bu, left, and David Goedicke, co-authors of the research on the XR-OOM mixed-reality driving simulation system, are pictured outside the Fiat virtual simulation vehicle, inside the Tata Center at Cornell Tech. Lindsay France/Cornell University&nbsp;Doctoral student David Goedicke is lead author of &ldquo;<a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3473682.3480266" target="_blank">XR-OOM: MiXed Reality Driving Simulation With Real Cars For Research and Design</a>,&rdquo; which he will present at the Association for Computing Machinery&rsquo;s <a href="https://chi2022.acm.org/" target="_blank">CHI 2022 conference</a>, April 30-May 5 in New Orleans.The senior author is <a href="https://tech.cornell.edu/people/wendy-ju/" target="_blank">Wendy Ju</a>, associate professor of information science at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech and the Technion, and a member of the information science field at Cornell.&nbsp;Hiroshi Yasuda, human-machine interaction researcher at Toyota Research Institute, also contributed to the study.This work is an offshoot of research Ju&rsquo;s lab conducted in 2018, <a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3173574.3173739" target="_blank">which resulted in VR-OOM</a>, a virtual-reality on-road driving simulation program. This current work takes that a step farther, Goedicke said, by combining video of the real world &ndash; known as &ldquo;video pass-through&rdquo; &ndash; in real time, with virtual objects.&ldquo;What you&rsquo;re trying to do is create scenarios,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You want to feel like you&rsquo;re driving in a car, and the developer wants full control over the scenarios you want to show to a participant. Ultimately, you want to use as much from the real world as you can.&rdquo;This system was built using the Varjo XR-1 Mixed Reality headset, along with the Unity simulation environment, which previous researchers demonstrated could be usable for driving simulation in a moving vehicle. XR-OOM integrates and validates these into a usable driving simulation system that incorporates real-world variables, in real time.&ldquo;One of the issues with traditional simulation testing is that they really only consider the scenarios and situations that the designers thought of,&rdquo; Ju said, &ldquo;so a lot of the important things that happen in the real world don&rsquo;t get captured as part of those experiments. (XR-OOM) increases the ecological validity of our studies, to be able to understand how people are going to behave under really specific circumstances.&rdquo;One challenge with XR versus VR is the faithful rendering of the outside world, Goedicke said. In mixed reality, what&rsquo;s on the video screen needs to precisely match the outside world.&ldquo;In VR, you can trick the brain really easily,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If the horizon doesn&rsquo;t quite match up, for instance, it&rsquo;s not a big problem. Or if you&rsquo;re making a 90-degree turn but it was actually more like 80 degrees, your brain doesn&rsquo;t care all that much. But if you try to do this with mixed reality, where you&rsquo;re incorporating actual elements of the real world, it doesn&rsquo;t work at all.&rdquo;To test the validity of their method, the researchers designed an experiment with three conditions: No headset (Condition A); headset with video pass-through only (Condition B); and headset with video pass-through and virtual objects (Condition C).The participants were asked to perform several stationary tasks, including starting the vehicle, adjusting seat and mirrors, fastening safety belt, and verbally describing which dashboard lights are visible. Participants were also asked to perform several low-speed driving tasks, including left and right turns, slalom navigation and stopping at a line. The drivers in conditions A and B had to navigate around actual physical cones, placed 8 feet apart; those in Condition C saw superimposed cones in their headsets.Most participants successfully completed all cockpit tasks, with most of the failed attempts attributable to unfamiliarity with the vehicle. Most also were successful in the driving tasks, with slalom navigation being most difficult for all, regardless of condition.This success validates the potential, Ju said, of this technology as a low-cost alternative to elaborate facilities for the testing of certain onboard vehicle technologies.&ldquo;This kind of high-resolution, mixed-reality headset is becoming a lot more widely available, so now we&rsquo;re thinking about how to use it for driving experiments,&rdquo; Ju said. &ldquo;More people will be able to take advantage of these things that will be commercially available and inexpensive really soon.&rdquo;Other co-authors included Sam Lee, M.S. &rsquo;21; and doctoral students Alexandra Bremers and Fanjun Bu.

Doctoral student David Goedicke sits behind the wheel of the Fiat virtual simulation vehicle, inside the Tata Center at Cornell Tech. Lindsay France/Cornell University

Cornell Tech researchers have developed a mixed-reality (XR) driving simulator system that could lower the cost of testing vehicle systems and interfaces, such as the turn signal and dashboard.

Mixed-reality driving simulator a low-cost alternative

This article was discussed in our <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.wevolver.com/profile/the.next.byte&source=gmail&ust=1652834752670000&usg=AOvVaw0nokl6Vw0qFseoqBb6ekTp" href="https://www.wevolver.com/profile/the.next.byte" id="isPasted" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Next Byte podcast</a>.&nbsp;<iframe height="200px" width="100%" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" seamless="" src="https://player.simplecast.com/86de3e57-5b39-45b4-aac4-c0a5d3bb3456?dark=false" class="fr-draggable" data-lf-yt-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true"></iframe>The full article will continue below.<hr>While it&rsquo;s far from the first time the technology has tried to break into the mainstream, virtual reality is currently enjoying a renaissance for everything from training and telerobotics to entertainment &mdash; aided, in no small way, by the steady march of technology improving both the hardware and the underlying software.Today&rsquo;s virtual reality systems, however, concentrate almost exclusively on sight and sound, with a much smaller number attempting to leverage the user&rsquo;s sense of touch. Even there, a big sense is left unused: Smell.A team of scientists at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) and the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia, aim to address that with proof that programmable scents, combined with off-the-shelf virtual reality hardware and software, can enhance a user&rsquo;s sense of presence in the virtual world.<h1>Smell-o-vision</h1>The team set about building an experimental system designed to determine whether being able to smell, rather than just see, a virtual environment would engage users more deeply. The environment in question: Capcom&rsquo;s survival horror Resident Evil 7, running on a PlayStation 4 games console with a PlayStation VR virtual reality headset.For the smells, the olfactometer portion of a custom-built simultaneous gustometer olfactometer (SGO), created for an earlier study, was employed. Featuring six computer-controlled mass-flow controls linked to the air flow through six glass saturators, the olfactometer can pump varying concentrations and mixtures of scents through a tube to the user&rsquo;s nose.<img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNjUwNDg2OTY0MDMzLXZyc21lbGwyLmpwZyIsImVkaXRzIjp7InJlc2l6ZSI6eyJ3aWR0aCI6OTUwLCJmaXQiOiJjb3ZlciJ9fX0=" style="width: 300px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib" alt="A photograph of the CSIRO lab where experiments into adding smells to virtual reality environments took place, Four areas are numbered: 1, a questionnaire table; 2, a user gameplay area; 3, an olfactometer; 4, a monitoring and supervision station. A player is seen in the gameplay area; a researcher is seen at the monitoring station.">The experimental setup for adding smell feedback to virtual reality comprised of a vented gameplay area (2), a link to an olfactometer (3) which could pump programmed smells to the user, a monitoring station (4) with a researcher triggering the smells, and a final questionnaire station (1) for post-game feedback.Not all of the odors were ones you&rsquo;d volunteer to smell under normal conditions. While the first odor, a green leafy scent dubbed &ldquo;forest,&rdquo; would be pleasant enough, and the &ldquo;smoke&rdquo; odor &mdash; produced by an off-the-shelf liquid mesquite smoke designed for barbecues &mdash; at least tolerable, the &ldquo;dank&rdquo; odor would be less palatable, while the &ldquo;rotten&rdquo; odor delivers exactly what it promises.There&rsquo;s a reason behind the selection of smells, though, and it ties in to the reason for using a zombie-themed survival horror game as the virtual environment. Previous studies, the team notes, had found that unpleasant odors had a measurably higher effect on the user&rsquo;s sense of presence &mdash; and that odors matched to the virtual environment were more readily perceived. In other words: A surprise decapitated head which smells rotten should have a stronger impact than one which smells of flowers, or replacing the head with a bouquet of perfumed roses.<h1>Smells like you&rsquo;re really there</h1>The experiment saw 22 participants placed in a walk-through game section which didn&rsquo;t involve immediate peril, the use of weapons, or the appearance of enemies. First, they started next to a vehicle before walking through a forest; soon, the forest gave way to swamp. A disturbing sculpture gave off a rotten smell, while a fire offered the aroma of smoke. A kitchen revealed rotten food, which prepared the participants for a journey through dank water to find a surprise head floating next to them.Of the 22 participants, 11 were also fitted with a wearable designed to track their physiological responses. Regardless of which group a participant was in, they were asked to complete questionnaires to determine their responses to the standard and smell-enhanced versions of the game.The results show promise. Participants generally reported an increased sense of spatial presence &mdash; the feeling of actually being present in the game world &mdash; when playing with the smells available. Interestingly, participants also appeared to exhibit heightened anxiety &mdash; though other emotional states did not appear to be affected. These reports were backed by data from the wearable sensors, finding increased heart rate and body temperature in the presence of odor and a significant decrease in electrodermal activity (EDA).<img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNjUwNDg2OTc2MTI5LXZyc21lbGw0LmpwZyIsImVkaXRzIjp7InJlc2l6ZSI6eyJ3aWR0aCI6OTUwLCJmaXQiOiJjb3ZlciJ9fX0=" style="width: 300px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib" alt="A graph showing the player environment ratings across five measures for the experience both with and without odors: Match shows a very large difference, presence a significant difference, engagement and naturalness smaller differences, while the measure marked &quot;negative&quot; has only a very small difference. In all cases, however, the with-odor scores are higher.">The researchers noted a significant improvement in user presence when scents were used alongside the visual and audio elements of the virtual reality experience. &ldquo;While the game was a useful test bed for more &lsquo;extreme&rsquo; smells,&rdquo; the team notes, &ldquo;we believe the findings from this study demonstrate that the use of smells in virtual environments should be serious considered for situations where presence and realism are critical [such as] virtual training environments for emergency services (fire fighting for example), military personnel, hazardous chemical response teams,&rdquo; as well as virtual reality exposure therapy.The team further suggests that the results are strong enough to support the development of commercial odor-delivery devices for integration into virtual reality hardware in the future, though a number of difficulties are noted &mdash; including the size of the hardware required and the cost of development, both of which suggest the technology would find a home in &ldquo;larger-scale training simulations, gallery, and theme-park installations&rdquo; long before anyone will be connected a programmable olfactometer to their PlayStations.The team&rsquo;s work has been published in the journal <cite><a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0265039" target="_blank">PLoS ONE</a></cite> under open-access terms.<h1>Reference</h1>Nicholas S. Archer, Andrew Bluff, Andrew Eddy, Chreshall K. Nikhil, Nick Hazell, Damian Frank, and Andrew Johnston: <cite>Odour enhances the sense of presence in a virtual reality environment, PLoS ONE 17(3)</cite>. DOI <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0265039" target="_blank">10.1371/journal.pone.0265039</a>.

While Capcom's Resident Evil 7 may already be terrifying in virtual reality, adding smells — ranging from a leafy forest to rotting flesh — really pushes things to a new level, researchers have found.

Putting volunteers into the virtual reality world of Capcom's zombie-filled Resident Evil 7, researchers have found that smells — particularly unpleasant ones — have a measurable effect on user presence, in a study which could prove important for future VR training systems.

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