What They Say
Well, by definition it’s not to do with displays, as the article is entitled “Is There VR for Senses Other Than Sight?”, but Gizmodo talked to academics working on other inputs to human senses and highlighted haptics, audio, scent, taste which could be directly stimulated or emulated by stimulating the same brain reaction as the stimulus.
One academic is looking at the different impacts of microgravity so that training could be performed for astronauts operating in different gravity fields to the earth.
Another pointed out that work in this area has been going on a long time.
“The first VR attempt to assemble various senses was in 1957 with ‘Sensorama.’”
What We Think
I tend to be sceptical of emulating senses with brain stimulation. For example, could we be clever enough to simulate the complexity of subtle but important human perception effects with the kind of coarse application of brain stimulation? I doubt it, honestly. That said, there is no doubting the power of senses such as smell from Proust’s madeleine onwards.
Of course, it’s a long standing joke that pornography is often a driver for technology and had ‘scratch and sniff’ been more popular in that application, it might have been more successful.(BR)
