Burnt rubber and gunfire will not be essentially the most pleasing of smells, however for motion video games, they is perhaps the most typical. At least, that’s true for GameScent, a brand new machine that goals to make gaming extra immersive by including scent to the equation.

GameScent, which dropped late final month to a little bit of fanfare and some snickering, makes use of an adapter and an app in your cellphone to seize audio whilst you play. It then feeds these audio cues into the corporate’s “innovative AI,” which then triggers sure smells.

It’s a hexagonal machine, suitable with most consoles, PCs, and digital actuality setups, constructed to carry six totally different aromas at a time. At launch, these smells are known as Gunfire, Explosion, Forest, Storm, Racing Cars, and Clean Air—maybe a very powerful, because it’s meant to neutralize no matter odors could linger.

“We feel like we are adding the missing link, if you will, to gaming, which is the use of olfaction,” says GameScent president Casey Bunce. Future scents the corporate intends to launch embody Ocean, Sports Arena, and—maybe troublingly—Blood.

Bunce says that the machine’s launch scents—which I’d argue will not be essentially the most aromatically pleasing lineup—had been largely determined primarily based on requests from players. They needed smells to associate with motion or horror video games, thus all of the explosions and gore.

Those smells may be robust. During a demo of GameScent at this week’s Game Developers Conference, the machine, paired up with Far Cry 6, dutifully pumped out the scent of carnage and burning rubber. It’s set to a two-minute timer, that means it gained’t create a whole haze over your room each time you get right into a gunfight—however it’s nonetheless higher to position the unit far out of your gaming perch, reasonably than sit close to it. While its tamer choices like Forest are good in a Febreze form of approach, anybody delicate to scent, like myself, would possibly get a headache after a number of whiffs of automobile stink.

GameScent’s creators say they hope to launch a further 30 to 40 scents within the coming yr, making it simpler for gamers to customise what they’d like their expertise to scent like.

The firm’s merchandise are largely manufactured from important oils, which you’ll be able to simply decide up on the retailer. When I requested what’s to cease me from dumping in, for instance, my very own lavender oils, a rep for GameScent instructed me, “Honestly, it would probably work. Look, you might end up clogging the thing, and then you just take it out and flush it out with water.” To preserve important oil lovers from utilizing their very own smells, the corporate plans to work with its group by way of an “insider’s club,” which can take suggestions into consideration.

That being stated, GameScent doesn’t plan to produce each consumer’s demand. “We get a lot of like—you know, X-rated requests,” Bunce says. “Very strange requests.”