Smells like something died in here: 'Resident Evil 7' gets a reality boost from smells

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2022-03-31 05:00

Australia; NSW

tofuprod, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Walking through the virtual reality forest in "Resident Evil 7" can be brought to life even more if you can also smell the forest, according to Australian research. The researchers asked people to play the virtual reality game both with and without smells designed to match parts of the game, such as the smell of forests, smoke, something rotten and dank smells. They found that the addition of the smells significantly increased people’s sense of being present in the game environment.

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conference: PLOS ONE

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Organisation/s: CSIRO, University of Technology Sydney (UTS)

Funder: This work was supported by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) Active Integrated Matter (AIM) Future Science Platform. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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