Virtual reality is undoubtedly an immersive feast for the eyes, and accompanied by surround sound headphones that pump in realistic high-def sounds to our ears, users are pulled into a digital world.

But what about our other senses? What about those who actually want to smell their digital universe?

The attachment is a novel idea, but as you can see it’s a rather bizarre piece of hardware that traps your visage in a claustrophobic mask that looks quite uncomfortable.

The FeelReal Mask is a curious VR peripheral that aims at injecting more “reality” into your virtual reality sessions by simulating the sense of smell to virtual reality (yes, really). It will also deliver minor temperature fluctuations to simulate hot air, wind and even water mist.

It’s rightly labeled as a “mask” considering when you strap it on to VR hardware you’re pretty much obscuring your entire face, trapping your features in a bizarre claustrophobic contraption for the sake of “total immersion”.

The FeelReal Mask as showcased at GDC 2015. (Photo Credit: The Verge)

Since you’re mouth will be completely covered up, the mask features a Bluetooth microphone to ensure you’re not completely vocally cut-off from the outside world.

It seems like a novel concept from the start, but once you see what you have to go through to get your senses doused in the “full VR presence”, the FeelReal Mask will most likely scare everyone off. Smell is an inherently important sense, and is more closely tied to memory than any other of our five senses, so successfully tapping this reservoir could lead to potential interactive gold.

But how does the mask work? Loaded with a cartridge that produces seven unique smells that waft through “odor generating vents”, the oddity is tethered to the headset by Bluetooth and powered by a battery with a four-hour life cycle.

Hot and cool air are funneled through dual-sided vents along your upper cheekbones to simulate wind and the like, whereas the water mist lightly sprays at separate dual-sided vents along your cheeks.

The “odor generator” is right under your nose–like literally right under your schnozz while wearing the headset–and delivers the following scents:

• Ocean
• Jungle
• Fire
• Grass
• Powder
• Flowers
• Metal

The mask is attachable to just about every piece of VR tech out there including the Oculus Rift, Project Morpheus, Valve’s Vive headset and even Zeiss VR One.

The Verge tried out the hardware at GDC 2015 and likened it to “smell-o-vision” for VR.

The publication described it as “strapping a foam block over your mouth and nose, putting yourself at the mercy of its air vents,” and saying that it’s basically a “gas mask arranged into a little smiling face.”

While the FeelReal Mask is certainly a unique specimen in terms of adding smell to VR, we’ve seen other peripherals that aim to bring total immersion to the virtual world.

Hardware like the Dexmo exoskeleton from Dexta Robotics and the mo-capping CyberGlove are helping bring the sense of touch to virtual reality, laying the framework for technologies that could very well introduce hardware of Lawnmower Man-like proportions.

But I think senses like smell (and taste for that matter) are best left to the real world.

The post FeelReal Brings Sense of Smell To Virtual Reality appeared first on VR World.

Valve has confirmed that it won’t be holding a big press conference at GDC 2015 today, contrary to rampant internet rumors of a Half-Life 3 reveal on 3/3 at 3pm.

The news comes straight from Kotaku, who spoke to Valve marketing director Doug Lombardi to confirm the whole thing is a “big mix up”. Valve apparently has no plans to hold any kind of huge press conference today at GDC.

It turns out the confused 3pm “event” is actually a game physics presentation from Valve programmer Sergiy Migdalskiy that aims at teaching “fundamental elements and practical considerations for using collision detection and physics simulations in games”

How did this happen?

HTC and Valve have teamed up to make the Vive VR headset a reality, leading to speculation that Half-Life 3 could be a perfect launch title.

On the heels of HTC (TPE: 2498) ‘s big announcement in partnering with Valve to make their VR headset “Vive” a reality, gamers started speculating that Half-Life 3 would be a perfect game to release on the new peripheral. It could be a match made in heaven, and it would certainly shake up the games industry.

Then a particular BBC News article came up that seemingly cemented the news. The article had a quote from HTC Chairwoman Cher Wang saying that “We are co-operating with Half-life, and I think… I hope, you know, it will be on it.”

This little bit of interview text had gamers speculating rapidly across forums and social media, fueled to an inferno thanks to this little tidbit in the BBC article:

“Valve is expected to provide more details about the launch at its own presentation at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco on Tuesday.”

In reality, Wang’s words have been misconstrued; she “hopes” that Half-Life will be on the Vive VR headset–but we all know how far rumors have been known to reach. Plus the BBC article in question has been updated with the following text that pretty much nixes hope.

“But the BBC understands that Valve’s own employees were surprised by Ms Wang’s comments as they were not working on a Half-life game for the new helmet at the moment,” an update on the article reads.

The part about a press conference on March 3 at 3pm was mostly fabricated by Reddit posts, which then spread across to Twitter and pretty much had the entire gaming world expecting to see a Half-Life 3 reveal in the afternoon.

Chances are that if Valve’s own marketing director says that it’s a “big mix up”, then it most assuredly is.

This is just another one of those failed Half-Life 3 rumors that drove the internet into a frenzy, and we’ll likely see more rumors spawn until Valve issues some sort of concrete news.

Source: Kotaku

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Today Valve formally announced Vive, its virtual reality headset, to the world and delivered details on how the Steam-powered hardware will impact the world of VR.

To make its peripheral a reality, Valve has tapped Taiwainese smartphone maker HTC (TPE: 2498) to manufacture the hardware.

Originally prototyped at ValveVR, Vive is the finalized form of the company’s virtual reality hardware. Vive will make use of Steam VR’s tracking technology as well as tap into the platform’s array of games–but Valve has plans to embrace a wide scope beyond gaming.

With Vive, the partners claim that users will be able to literally be able to seamlessly walk around and explore the VR space thanks to the Full Room Scale 360 Degree Solution, “inspect objects from all angles and truly interact with your surroundings”.

“A gyrosensor, accelerometer, and laser position sensor combine to precisely track the rotation of your head on both axes to an accuracy of 1/10th of a degree, allowing you to look around the virtual environment naturally.”

To tap into the full potential of Vive you’ll need to hook up a pair of SteamVR “base stations” to track your movement, pretty much giving a motion capture effect within a limited 15 feet x 15 feet space.

As for visuals, Vive VR headset will simulate 1200 x 1080 high-definition images at 90 frames-per-second on two screens over each eye, promising to fill your field of vision “in all directions”.

But you’ll need to hook up your own headphones for audio immersion, as the Vive is an eyes-only experience.

As for input, HTC is creating specially designed “simple and intuitive” wireless controllers to interface with Vive, which will be fully tracked to simulate user input within the virtual space. The HTC VR Controllers will be sold and packaged in pairs.

What kind of games can Vive VR host?

A recent thread on NeoGAF showcases a very such game that could fully tap into the potential of the Vive headset. The Gallery, and upcoming project from from Cloudhead Games, looks to be a leading example as to what developers can pull off on the platform.

Below we a quote from the game’s press release that talks about what Vive means for the dev team:

“We now have a hardware target that matches the original vision for The Gallery: Six Elements. To unleash the user into full, volumetric, 360 roomscale experiences with motion control!

“The HTC and Valve VR experience offers hardware so precise and exacting that we now have the fidelity in our mechanics that we did not have access to before. You will not believe this tech until you get a chance to use it yourself. This is something to be excited about!”

But it’s not all about gaming. Valve wants to help bridge the gap between virtual reality and actual reality to change our lives.

Vive can be used to aid in communication between people across the world, simulate travel to foreign countries, and a million other possibilities.

The company is also partnering with entertainment producers like HBO and Lionsgate Films to bring immersive video experiences to the device.

Valve has already shipped out Beta versions of the Vive Developer Editions out to a variety of game devs including Vertigo Games, Bossa, Cloudhead Games, Dovetail Games, Wemo Labs, and more.

“HTC Vive is real, it’s here and it’ll be ready to go before the start of 2016,” Cher Wang, Chairwoman of HTC, said in the official press release.

Be sure to drop by the Vive VR homesite for more information or to sign-up for e-mail announcements.

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