You too can stop and smell the digital roses....

[Maephina]

Ever thought it'd be cool to really smell, taste or touch that bronto burger?
Well thanks to Sony, someday in the not too distant future...maybe you can!

Sony aims to beam sights, sounds into brain

[Tarryk]

This is both good news and bad news.

Good News: It's a step forward towards the ultimate "true" VR experience, but only if they actually act on the patent.

Bad News: It's now a patent owned by Sony. Which means if anyone else uses this specific technology, they get sued and it never hits the market. Either Sony does it first, or no-one does it at all.

Not sure, but the bad might outweigh the good here. :/

[epiphonic]

just to be obtuse...

if i play doom, i better SMELL DOOM TOO!

[Nexeus]

you know..., the term "I see dead people" would soo apply here, so would "yeah 'cause I just killed them all in Doom 10 VR!"

[Coltess]

I just can't believe you can get a patent on an idea. They have no research, no tests, no hardware, just an idea. Imagine if every sci-fi author patented every idea for every cool gizmo he/she invented for a book or movie!
And what happens when the gizmo pumps in more energy than you're brain can handle? Instant veggie! Then you could truly sue the games industry and Sony for causing damage to young people

[Boinky]

Well are we missing something? I mean a truly immersive VR experience would be killer, but wouldn't the technology be better used in the hands of an institute for the blind. I suppose if they can ever perfect it Sony would probably be willing to sell it for those purposes too. Would be an odd step in the treatment of the visually impaired though. Just think of the richer trendy blind folks looking down on the poorer ones because they didn't have the newest PS25 glasses.

[epiphonic]

since its theirs now, i hope they can pull one of the moves that microsoft was nice enough to do, make it affordable for developers to take the idea and run with it.

MSDN = microsoft developers network, once you pay fees to microsoft for this subscription (usually as a company, IE Hewlett Packard) , you can download just about ANY version of windows and/or microsoft products to develop and test your own drivers, hardware and software under these OS"s, and you've got tons of liscenses to use instances on many many PC's.

If sony did the same thing with their patent, the development of the technology would be pretty accelerated.

I think i have a point, smack me.

[Maephina]

Wow c'mon guys you don't have to be nerds ALL the time!!!! (okay maybe you do cause I find it hard not to be one my self)

I say that because not one of you stated the obvious...

Think of the possibilities with pr0n@!

[Oddysee]

Yeah, cus now you're not only looking at a sweaty porn star... No, you can smell the sweat (and various other bits) too...

Come to think of it tho, no thanks. I mean, in all honesty, there are some smells I'm glad I can only see.
Imagine the "rotting corpse and fried flesh" smells you'd get from plasma fire. Imagine the "decay and death" you'd smell playing RE. How exactly would they even know what this smelt like? Gonna dig up corpses and do tests?

And as for what mae' wrote, sure, Pron would be teh big shit. But let's face it. If you could DL a sexual partner with a perfect body, full visual, dildonics' tech for that "more real than real" feel, AND add the smell. No one would go out and pick up anymore. We'd have generations of "unfortunates" (the nerds we all know who substiture RL with VR) who'd never leave their home. The RL is scary, now they can just stay in with a cyber world made specifically for them. Smells and everything.
Sure, VR might be cool. But we should honestly be carefull not to make it too good. Cus sooner or later, people will leave RL in favour of it. I know they do already, and that's scary. They're of no use to the human race as a whole that way.

We might not like all humans, but if all the people who had a tough time just changed worlds permanantly, we'd be screwed!

Personally, I'm not so sure this is such a great idea... Or that it's even needed. But hey, now they got the idea. It's only a matter of time.
Gotta love the human craving for evolution! ^^




Tm