If fancy graphics and scary sound effects aren’t enough for you, enhance your gaming experience by immersing yourself in smell-o-vision or com-pooh-ter games. Picture the scene: you’re engrossed in fighting German troops in Stalingrad when you gradually notice the unmistakable whiff of gunsmoke in the air. Or perhaps you are speeding around the race track when you suddenly have to slam on the brakes. As well as the sound of screeching tyres emanating from your PC, you experience the smell of burning rubber. The idea is that the smells would change during the game to add atmosphere. So you might get a quick whiff of pizza as you drove by a fast-food outlet in Grand Theft Auto.

It may sound like taking realism too far, but it’s already here according to Jo Cooke, chief marketing officer at amBX, a gaming special effects company, owned by Philips. “The first level of sensory experience is light and sound,” she says. “We make it possible for any effects to be produced, and this includes smell.”

The company has already pioneered technologies that it claims add realism to games. These include add-on extras such as desk-mounted fans that blow wind at the player if their on-screen character is freefalling, for example, and a system of lights that projects different colours onto the walls around the PC.

So how does it all work? The current amBX system enables game makers to add trigger points into their titles that can tell external kit connected to your PC to perform a specific action at an appropriate moment. These trigger points would be used to release smells.

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Some resilient gremlins need to be overcome . “It’s easy to introduce a smell into a room,” Cooke says; “the problem is how to remove an odour quickly in order to create the next one.”

The company has tested several types of smell-release device that employ a variety of techniques such as emitting fine sprays of fragrance that evaporate quickly or wafers preimpregnated with odours. However, until this issue is resolved, the smell machine will remain under lock and key.

Olfactory technology isn’t new: the 1960 film Scent of Mystery, starring Elizabeth Taylor, was released complete with accompanying smells, although the only mystery about it was how such a stinker made it onto the big screen. At the height of the 1990s dotcom boom, a US start-up called DigiScents produced a desktop gadget called the iSmell that emitted odours as you surfed the web. The company’s proud boast “We’re building a portal of digital smells – a snortal” remains a classic of dotcom buffoonery.

Still, for many teenagers it may have its uses: “I haven’t been smoking, Mum – honest. It’s the computer.”

WORTH CONSIDERING ...

Guitammer ButtKicker Gamer

£110 www.thebuttkicker.com

Enjoy the effects of explosions without cranking up the volume by attaching this gizmo to your chair and either a computer, a games console or a DVD player. Whenever a big bass effect occurs in the game (or film) that you are enjoying, the Buttkicker will violently shake the chair to give the impression of a subwoofer, even if you are using headphones.

TN Games 3rd Space gaming vest

£100 www.tngames.com

Experience the travails that your on-screen character goes through during a game by strapping on this special vest. The maker says it can simulate the sensation of being shot, stabbed or blown up. An air compressor activates up to eight pneumatic cells embedded in the vest, which “punch” your torso. It can even (apparently) replicate an eerie tap on the shoulder. A pity, then, that it doesn’t work with all games.