Scientists have come up with a new way to introduce odors into virtual reality via small, wireless interfaces.

Creating smells in virtual reality is a vexing problem that has prevented consumer VR devices from offering a full sensory experience in most settings. “People can touch in VR,” says Xinge Yu, a professor at the department of biomedical engineering at the City University of Hong Kong and the lead author of the new paper, published today in Nature Communications. “And of course, you can see and hear in VR. But how about smell and taste?”

— Read more in New research aims to bring odors into virtual worlds at MIT Technology Review.

A user could walk near a river in the VR environment and not only hear the sound of rushing water but also smell wet grass. Or if they wandered into a forested area, they would smell the fresh scent of pine. This is accomplished by using hitboxes, which are invisible shapes in the VR environment that activate when the avatar collides with them.

— Read more in Stop And Smell The Roses — From Outer Space: Researchers at Texas A&M are looking at how multisensory virtual reality can support astronauts during future long-duration missions at Texas A&M Today.

Guests sit down in what looks like a half-open egg-shaped lounge chair. Once inside, guests put on the VR headsets, and as they watch the virtual reality movie, the pod moves — it turns, whirls, releases odors and provides other haptic feedback.

— Le Musk, the directorial debut of Oscar-winning Indian composer A.R. Rahman, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. Read more in The tech behind A R Rahman's VR film Le Musk fully explained at TechRadar.

He snaps the cartridge onto a virtual headset, which, if you've never seen one, looks like a massive pair of ski goggles. I pull the whole device over my eyes and nose and enter the metaverse. A flower box full of roses appears in front of me. I lean over, pick one and sniff.

Oh, wow. That's so cool. It really smells like a rose.

— Read more in Vermont tech firm believes to experience the metaverse, you have to smell it too at NPR, or see Want to smell in virtual reality? A Vermont-based startup has the technology at WBUR.