What’s stopping us from making smellulators, for games or movies?
Vietnamwar videogame: smell of napalm in the morning.
The sims: baby pooped.
Survival game: that lump of flesh is rotting.
Smell you later
TL;DR it worked but was often considered a poor, synthetic, replacement for the real world scents. Some people liked it, but most seemed to dislike it.
“Smell-o-Vision” was predated by “AromaRama” and followed by “Odorama” and some other scratch and sniff attempts. Various motion or “4D” rides have also tried to incorporate smell, then often drop it.
Audiences just don’t like it.
Images flash by and disappear. Sounds may resonate a little but are basically gone as soon as you stop making them.
Smells linger.
Imagine the cattleyard smell still hanging in the air when the scene has changed to milady’s boudoir, or to the fancy restaurant.
good point.
Too complex, too many inputs needed, it would be a proprietary exploitation product nightmare like liquid ink paper printers, initially bringing such a product to market would make it cost a fortune, and it would need widespread adoption before the economy of scale could kick in.
Fascinating. I thought smell-o-vision was just a joke in Futurama.
I remember a 3D show at Disney that did this when I was a kid. William Castle did something like that once too iirc
Edit: William Castle did the thing where he shocked viewers with electricity, not the smell stuff.
Edit 2: I think it was this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/It's_Tough_to_Be_a_Bug!
They released a stinky smell when the stink bug character was on screen.
Smell is a pretty complex thing.
For vision, we only have four different kinds of receptors, which can be stimulated by electromagnetic waves on a one-dimensional spectrum.
For smells, we have about 350 different kinds of receptors. Also, they can’t easily be stimulated by electromagnetic waves, but only by molecules, which are much more difficult/costly to transport to their corresponding receptors.
Mmm…styrene, benzene, and other carcinogenic aromatic hydrocarbons…
It’s a mystery who just read Ready Player One. A complete mystery.
Nah he watched Futurama.
Never heard of it