For a mere $70, you can hook up this toaster-like contraption from ScentSciences, and it will waft 20 different scents into your gaming lair. Trudging through a field of daisies on your way to your next battle? You'll experience it through your nose, too. Do you love the smell of napalm in the morning? The scent of victory can be yours, right there in your home theater.
The various scents must be programmed into games, but California-based ScentSciences thought of that as well, including ScentEditor, an editing app that allows users to create their own scents and share them with other players.
ScentScape is not only aimed at gaming, but it can be adapted to home videos. This must be part of the march toward complete realism in the realm of home entertainment. After all, if you have 3-D video, you might as well try to accompany that with 7.1 surround sound -- and now Smell-O-Vision, right? Necessary or not, after the long and checkered past of the Smell-O-Vision idea, this must be the most advanced attempt yet.
This looks like a fun gadget, but we're thinking an active imagination might be able to do better. For instance, you know that old TV gag where someone falls down the stairs, and you don't see the person falling, but you hear it depicted in a cacophonous sound effect? Your imagination fills in the action in a much more entertaining way than seeing it portrayed on screen. The same goes for a variety of smells, noxious or otherwise.