Wei Hsin Chen

Enhancing Virtual Reality with Olfactory Cues

Virtual Reality can create immersive experiences by stimulating multiple senses. This project explores whether integrating olfactory cues can enhance realism and emotional engagement in VR environments. Specifically, it examines how congruent and non-congruent smells influence users’ perceived presence and emotional reactions. It builds on the idea that multi-sensory experiences can significantly heighten the sense of being ‘there’.

Research Questions:

1. How do congruent and non-congruent smells affect users’ perceived presence in VR environments?
2. How do congruent and non-congruent smells affect users’ emotional reactions in VR environments?
3. How does the experience level with VR technology (novice versus experienced users) affect the emotional reactions and perceived presence when exposed to congruent versus non-congruent smells?

Virtual Environment: A virtual forest filled with pine trees, wild animals, camping sites, cabins, and flowers (lavender bushes).

Experiential Task: Participants spent three minutes exploring the virtual forest and looking for flowers.

Olfactory Conditions: As participants encountered lavender bushes:

• Prototype 1 (Congruent Condition): Lavender scents were manually released to enhance the immersive experience.
• Prototype 2 (Non-Congruent Condition): Coffee bean scents were released to test the impact of sensory inconsistency.
• Prototype 3 (Control Condition): No scents were released, serving as a baseline for comparison.

Testing the Prototype

A total of 25 participants engaged in the experiment. After exploring the virtual environment under each condition, participants completed post-testing questionnaires (Presence Questionnaire and Positive and Negative Affect Schedule). They also participated in interviews to evaluate how the different scents affected their sense of presence and emotional responses.