How can you use sensory cues to enhance VR experiences?

Today's widely accessible technology can only immerse a user in 2 senses - Visual and auditory. Much work is being done including olfactory(smell), Touch(Haptics), etc. But it has a long way to go to become affordable and accessible. The discussion should concentrate on using visual and auditory cues to immerse a user in an experience fully. The brain is very powerful but equally willing to be tricked. A well-designed human-centered experience with these 2 main cues can transport a user into any environment to deliver value in ways impossible earlier.

VR is evolving into a full-sensory experience: -Scent emitters enhance realism and memory. -Advanced haptic gear mimics real textures and temperatures. -3D audio tech enriches spatial awareness. -Eye-tracking sharpens visual focus, while taste integration is an emerging area, promising novel VR interactions. These innovations merge the virtual with the real, offering deeply immersive, multisensory experiences.

When it comes to sound, it's important to understand what categories of sound are relevant. For example, do you understand the difference between 3D audio and spatial audio? 3D audio is primarily concerned with the position of where sound comes from. Is it in front of you? Behind you? Slightly to your left? Spatial audio takes this a step further by taking into account your head movement (e.g., if a sound is in front of you and you turn your head to the left, it'll now be on your right) and the materials in your space (i.e., simulating how something would sound directly in your space - compare a violinist playing within the echoes in an auditorium vs. a small room). Getting audio right can make your experience much more immersive!

Haptics can be incredibly important in VR experiences. Right now peripheral haptic devices such as vests and gloves are usually quite expensive, but with a little creativity you can still get great touch-related cues in your experiences. I work on a VR forklift driving app where we use the real forklift as the controller. Being able to stand on a real truck and hold onto the controls is a completely different feeling from waving around controllers to pretend to grab them. Having a "buck" or otherwise making use of new mixed reality (MR) capabilities can be an inexpensive way to add more touch modalities into your app design. If your experience is motion heavy, haptics can help prevent motion sickness, too!

While there are no mainstream VR headsets yet that provide olfactory cues to users out of the box, many researchers and small teams are innovating in this area. One idea is to provide scented or scent-generating accessories with your experience that provide these cues. A meditation experience, for example, could be augmented with an essential oil diffuser to help set the mood. This is something you could have much easier control over with an in-person event. But there's nothing stopping you from innovating on a "box" you can ship to customers for something to try at home! There are some developers creating devices like the Cilia development kit you can try, however, most users will not own the device for at home use at this point in time.

With new mixed reality features in VR headsets like the Meta Quest 3, the opportunities for eating experiences in VR have just expanded! Previously, limited VR dining experiences at restaurants relied on hand tracking cues in a completely virtual world so, luckily, now it will be easier to shovel morsels into your mouth in MR. Much like with smell, taste in VR is a niche experience that can't be sold like a traditional app on the app store (you can't download a taste... yet) so this is best for experiential art events. However, you could send your users a box of mystery truffles to enjoy with the additional visual and sound cues in VR and explore the artistic value of this sensory experience to drum up excitement about a product launch!

VR for the masses is currently limited to primarily visuals, sounds, and touch (in that order) due to the lack of smell and taste devices in current mainstream VR headsets. But don't let that stop you and your team from creating a bespoke experience that could seriously wow your users! With a little creativity, you can certainly add elements of smell and taste to VR if you're bold enough. But this would require considerations and product design that is outside of typical VR development projects. (To be clear, smell and taste are not currently considered important to make VR experiences feel immersive. But it's a fun area to experiment with!)