Hasta La Gadget!

The last 20 years of gaming have treated us to better graphics and sound, more innovative control schemes, and more mature and sophisticated storylines. Could the next innovation involve the olfactory system? If the team behind some unique British Army training videos have anything to say about it, then yes.

According to a Daily Mail article, researchers in the U.K. have partnered with the Ministry of Defence there to make training videos for the British Army a tad more immersive. While the troops watch the videos, foul smells are released into the air, appropriate to what’s onscreen.

"Yes, two Raw Sewages and a Weapon Fire please."

(Credit: Newsteam.co.uk)

For example, a training video involving a real-life village would have the smell of cooking food associated with it, teaching the soldier to associate that village or type of village with that smell.

Then, when the soldier enters the village in real life, the absence of such a smell could signify that the area had been evacuated and taken over by hostile forces. Or that no one was cooking at that time.

Professor Bob Stone, an engineering professor and research director of the Human Factors Integration Defence Technology Centre (HFIDTC, or SHIELD) at Birmingham University, says the scent delivery system, or SDS100, consists of a compressed air chamber with eight compartments and four fans. Each compartment holds a pot of wax, chemically infused with a particular odor.

With 100 scent options available, including “weapon fire,” “cat urine,” and “human feces,” it’s no wonder the researchers speculate that this technology could be incorporated into video games “within three to five years” (’cause gamers just love the smell of cat urine).

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(Credit: Komodo/Innex)

Sure, we really liked the Nyko Wing Wireless Classic Controller for use with the Nintendo Wii, but if we could choose any controller to use with Virtual Console games, it would be the originals themselves.

Developer Komodo may have come up with a device that could pacify

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Even earphones that came out more than five years ago can still be great.

OK, so maybe 100 bucks or less isn’t cheap in the scheme of things, but when you take into consideration that some of the most highly rated, excellent-sounding in-ear headphones can cost more than $400 (…

Now that Intel’s been slapped with a record $1.45b antitrust fine in Europe, it seems like the claws are coming out — AMD just put up that “Break Free” site, and today we’ve got NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang calling Chipzilla’s Atom pricing “unfair.” It seems that Intel sells the standard Atom chip for $45 on its own, but bundles the diminutive CPU into the oh-so-familiar netbook configuration for just $25, meaning NVIDIA’s Ion chipset isn’t price-competitive. Of course, this is just another twist in the endless argument about Ion, but despite the denials, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard whispers that Intel pretty much forces manufacturers to buy complete Atom chipsets — the dearth of Ion-powered netbooks in the market is fairly suspicious considering the GeForce 9400M at the heart of the platform is a well-known quantity. On the other hand, we’ve also heard this is all going to change and change dramatically at Computex next month, so we’ll see — either way, things are bound to get interesting.

[Via TrustedReviews]

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

CE-Oh no he didn’t! Part LX: NVIDIA calls Intel’s single-chip Atom pricing “pretty unfair” originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 May 2009 15:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Okay, we think we’re starting to get a good picture for how T-Mobile’s Android plans for the year are going to play out (naturally, this is all subject to change — we doubt the manufacturers know precisely when they’ll be ready with this stuff, much less the carrier). That seemingly leaked roadmap has now revealed its final Android-based treasure, a Motorola “Morrison” that looks a heck of a lot like the device we’d seen leaked through some Wal-mart docs. Granted, there’s a silver bar at the bottom here that isn’t present in the earlier picture, but they could easily be different generations of rendered mockups, so we’re not putting too much weight on that discrepancy. The roadmap currently has the Morrison pegged for the holiday season, so there’ll be plenty of Android devices available to you before you get a crack at this one — which probably isn’t how Moto would like to see it work out, but hey, them’s the breaks.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Motorola “Morrison” rounding out T-Mobile’s 2009 Android offerings? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 May 2009 15:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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