Virtual smell: authentic smell diffusion in virtual environments

Abstract

Smell is a key human sense. In the real world, smell plays a leading role in helping us appreciate an environment, for example the smell of fresh coffee, or the dead body. High-fidelity virtual environments are being increasingly used as an accurate representation of the real world for a wide variety of applications, including training, phobia treatment and virtual archeology. This paper compares the diffusion and perception of smell in real and virtual environments. Although airflow can be computed within a virtual environment using, for example a computational fluid dynamic simulator, the results do not necessarily predict how smell may be perceived in the real-world. Virtual smell needs to take into account the type of smell being considered and how humans may perceive this smell.