Hands-on: OVR Technology made me smell in VR

At AWE 2021 I have finally been able to try a scent emitter for virtual reality and in particular the one provided by OVR Technology. Let me tell you my first impressions of it.

OVR Technology

OVR Technology is a company that provides a scent emitter for virtual reality. Its product consists of a small add-on, called ION, that can be attached to the lower part of VR headsets thanks to some velcro straps that go all around the device and that can emit little particles of perfume to let you smell in virtual reality.

ION is battery-powered and can be controlled via Wi-fi, USB, or Bluetooth. It contains 9 cartridges of smells, and it can emit bursts of perfume in an optimal way: according to the company, its patented technology “allows for .1 millisecond bursts of scent and can change between scents in 20 milliseconds”. On its website is possible to read that “OVR’s water-based scents (IFRA Certified for safety) are dispersed and removed with precisely controlled intensity and timing based on both direct interaction and ambient proximity. This allows for purposeful scent interactions and combinations and prevents scent habituation or undesired mixtures over time”. It seems that OVR studied a lot about how to emit perfumes in the best way possible so as to offer a realistic sensory experience to its users.

OVR Technology is not the first scent emitter I have heard about: VAQSO and FeelReal have already been in the market before it (even if FeelReal has actually been blocked from releasing its products because of FDA regulations). But differently from VAQSO, the company doesn’t aim at selling the device to content producers, letting them choose the cartridges that they want, but it works together with the customer to shape what can be the best scents for him/her and then provides the device with the cartridges already included for a monthly subscription fee. It also provides out-of-the-box hardware+software solutions, like INHALE, a relaxation experience involving smell, that can be bought as a full package.

Hands-on with OVR Technology

I have been able to test a demo application of OVR Technology on Pico Neo 3, so a standalone device. It lasted just a few minutes, so consider my opinion just a “first impression”, because to have a full opinion on such kind of innovative piece of technology, I should test it for a long time.

I was provided the Pico Neo 3 headset with the ION module attached. Comfort-wise, wearing the headset felt the same as before, so the fact that the device made the headset slighter more front-heavy was not noticeable for me, maybe also because the Pico Neo 3 is already well balanced with the battery on the back.

The first thing I noticed, though, is that even if I hadn’t started any kind of experience yet, I could already feel some kind of residual smell from the unit. This was not a big issue for the remainder of the experience but anyway made me realize that is probably difficult to create a moment where there is completely no smell because the unit or the headset probably remain a bit dirty from the previous emissions, so they have always some kind of residual scent in every moment of your experience. This is not completely positive.

After I wore the headset, I could find myself in a neutral virtual environment, with something like 6 doors towards different environments. I don’t remember them all, but there were for sure a forest, a beach, a campfire, a vase full of roses. In every environment there were some interactive objects that were perfumed: in the scene with the roses, for instance, you could grab the roses with your hands and put them close to your nose to smell their perfume; in the campfire, you could take a stick with a marshmallows in the end and smell it. Most scenes had multiple smells to feel: in the campfire scene, you could smell not only the marshmallow but also the burning logs… and the marshmallow changed its smell if you roasted it a bit.

I started with the scene of the roses, and as soon as I put the rose close to my nose, I immediately started smelling a good perfume of roses. The closer the rose, the more intense the perfume. And when I took two roses close to my nose, the intensity of the perfume was even bigger. I could also smell the root of the roses, that had a less pleasant scent. What surprised me in this and also in the other experiences was the reactiveness of the device: the scent emission was always fast and timely, and the device was also fast in changing the scent I had to smell when I moved from the top to the bottom of the rose. Smells didn’t mix in my nose unless the device wanted to. This was great for immersion, because I could really feel the smell as being coherent with what was happening in the virtual world.

The scents were also of good quality and in most cases, they felt natural. I mean, I could notice that the smells were not exactly like the ones of the real objects, and they felt more “chemical”, but they were close enough. My favorite scene was the campfire, and I loved how I could smell the burning logs and then feel the marshmallow when I put it close to my nose. Both the scents were realistic and felt pleasant to smell, so the experience not only felt more immersive and realistic but also more enjoyable. I totally loved it.

There have been also some downsides to my experience. First of all, I noticed that if the experience features a scent that the user doesn’t like, it feels really annoying. One of the last scenes that I tried was a forest, and as soon as I entered it, I could feel a smell that was not the one that I usually perceive when I am in a forest, but something else that felt a bit disgusting to me, something like dirty water. My brain reacted pretty badly to it, and my instinct was telling me to remove the headset to not feel that smell anymore. Our olfaction is one of the oldest senses that we have and it is strongly connected to many important areas of the brain: this means that a pleasant smell can increase the pleasure of being in a VR experience, but a bad smell can ruin completely the experience.

The other problem is that this system is based on keeping spraying perfumes in the nose of the user. In the beginning, I was totally in love with the experience, but after a few minutes, my nose started feeling it to be a bit too much, and I started having a bit of cotton mouth sensation. It was like when you have to buy a perfume as a gift and you go to a dedicated shop and you smell like twenty bottles to decide the best one… in the beginning, your nose is amazed by the beautiful scents, but in the end, your olfactory system feels that what you are doing is a bit too much and it would like to rest a bit. Here I felt the same sensation, it was like a bit of overload of my olfactory system after a few minutes with this system on. I guess that an experience using this kind of emitter shouldn’t be constantly emitting perfumes, but doing that only in sporadic moments to guarantee the comfort of the user.

Final impressions

I am fascinated by the recreation of smell and scent in virtual reality, and so I am very happy that finally I have been able to test a device of this kind. OVR Technology provides a good emulation of scent in VR, and I enjoyed using it especially in scenes where I could experience pleasant scents. I appreciated that the device is lightweight and very fast in emitting scent particles. But I also think that we are still in the very early days for scent emulation, and a lot of work has still to be done: the fact that I found the prolonged use of this device “tiresome” for my nose is a proof of that.

In any case, I think the company is doing a good job, and this is an interesting gadget about an experimental technology. I can’t wait to see how this device is going to evolve in the next years.