时间:2025-05-01 16:50:44 来源:网络整理编辑:探索
LONDON -- It's not every day you get invited to Paris to spend three hours smelling farts.SEE ALSO:T
LONDON -- It's not every day you get invited to Paris to spend three hours smelling farts.
SEE ALSO:Trey Parker and Matt Stone explain why you should be excited for the 'South Park' video gameSounds odd, doesn't it? But when you realise it involves some virtual reality technology for a new video game -- and, more importantly, that the game in question is South Park: The Fractured But Whole, the upcoming sequel to The Stick of Truth-- the whole thing starts to make a lot more sense.
Last week, I visited French company Buzzman, who were recently tasked with coming up with a fun accessory to be used in conjunction with the new game.
Ubisoft had an alpha version of the new game ready for me to have a go at. They also had a prototype of the beautifully named Nosulus Rift (the aforementioned VR fart simulator) for me to strap over my face.
To begin with, the main thing I had was questions: How would the Nosulus Rift work? What would its role in the game be? Why had they ploughed so much precious time and money into something so odd?
As the day unfolded though, everything gradually became clearer.
Following on from where The Stick of Truthleft off, The Fractured But Wholesees you -- the new kid in town -- joining Cartman & Co's superhero club to save South Park from an as-yet-unknown evil.
The game is another comedy RPG, which involves a mixture of fighting, puzzle-solving and adventure.
Crucially, it also involves a lot of farting.
As in The Stick of Truth,you can fart while battling enemies, but this time they've really taken the flatulence theme up a notch: farting in The Fractured But Wholeis also used to solve puzzles around town, and even to travel through time.
This is where the Nosulus Rift comes in.
The current prototype is a Bane-style mask that you strap over your face. Every time your character farts in the game, the device lights up green and a one-second blast of stench is emitted. When I started playing it was sort of nerve-wracking, because I didn't really know what the different buttons did or when it was going to kick in -- but when it did kick in, I knew about it.
There are two types of smell in the game -- one that's activated only once in the demo when your character sits on the toilet (this is by far the most intense of the two), and another, slightly more bearable smell that's activated more frequently as you fart your way around town.
The video at the top of this article shows me suffering through the worst of the two smells. The following Vine shows the second smell (I'd also gotten a bit more used to it by that point).
The Nosulus Rift is actually pretty clever. It basically connects to a console via Bluetooth or USB, and is triggered by a high frequency sound that gets tripped whenever you push the "fart" button on your controller. Air gets blasted through the mask, and activates the scent contained within tiny drops found in dual capsules at either end of the device.
"Basically it's fart perfume.”
“Each time there is a fart in the game we send a trigger and the pumps are activated – so airflow is going through the polymer drops," Valentin Squirelo, the 30-year-old Hardware Engineer at Productman (the sector of Buzzman that focusses on new products), explained to me.
"Basically it’s fart perfume.”
Fart perfume is an unexpectedly accurate way of describing it.
The scent I was smelling whenever the Nosulus Rift erupted in my face is a custom-made fragrance (for want of a better word) created by Isabelle Ferrand, a well-known perfume specialist who's worked for a number of famous French brands.
Over a period of weeks, Ferrand and her team apparently tested around 20-30 different "fragrances" before finally nailing the right one.
"At first, the work seemed very simple," Ferrand explained over a Skype call. "We worked with a lot of raw materials... But it's very difficult to have the smell of flatulence."
In the end, they combined smells from raw materials like onions, chorizo, mango, blackcurrent and notes of jasmine -- it sounds like a strange combination, but the resulting smell is... well, effective.
It's worth mentioning that there are no current plans -- sadly -- to make the Nosulus Rift available to the public. It's going to be featured at some upcoming events like Gamescon, but aside from that it's currently little more than a promotional tool.
It's a fun promotional tool, though. And although -- if it is made publicly available -- it'd be hard to imagine solo players using it for hours on end, it iseasy to imagine a group of friends having some fun with one.
Perhaps more interesting is the technology, and what it says about the direction VR is headed in.
Maybe it won't be too long before we start playing games with all five of our senses?
TopicsVirtual Reality
There's a big piece of fake chicken stuck to this phone case2025-05-01 16:44
媒體人:恒大計劃用002025-05-01 16:42
許家印 :恒大要繼續做好足球 足校校長王亞軍出任董事長2025-05-01 16:19
噩夢再現!瓜式曼城2命門遭熱刺痛擊 爭冠懸念重回2025-05-01 15:58
Honda's all2025-05-01 15:54
噩夢再現!瓜式曼城2命門遭熱刺痛擊 爭冠懸念重回2025-05-01 15:54
博格巴:始終喜歡為曼聯效力 足球甚至觸動中國人2025-05-01 15:17
亞特蘭大官方公告宣布 美國資金收購母公司55%股份2025-05-01 14:26
Katy Perry talks 'Rise,' her next batch of songs, and how to survive Twitter2025-05-01 14:16
曼聯前瞻 :紅魔爭勝保前四 C羅衝擊曆史進球第一人2025-05-01 14:16
Katy Perry talks 'Rise,' her next batch of songs, and how to survive Twitter2025-05-01 16:42
國足官方 :祝吳曦33歲生日快樂 十二強賽前8場已傾盡所有2025-05-01 16:19
卡拉格:曼聯簽回C羅是個錯誤 今夏留他是錯上加錯2025-05-01 16:13
分手為踢球 ?弗拉霍維奇被曝另尋新歡:23歲意小姐2025-05-01 15:54
Two states took big steps this week to get rid of the tampon tax2025-05-01 15:53
孔蒂 :我的話被翻譯誤解 熱刺讓我別再接意媒采訪2025-05-01 15:00
20日賠率:拜仁國米取勝領跑 巴薩戰瓦倫或再丟分2025-05-01 14:56
B費:C羅是曆史最佳球員 名記:C羅讓曼聯多拿15分2025-05-01 14:26
Give your kitchen sponge a rest on this adorable bed2025-05-01 14:19
26輪47分 !斑馬軍統治力下滑 近11賽季同期最低分2025-05-01 14:12