Sight, Sound and Smell in Immersive Experiences of Urban History: Virtual Vauxhall Gardens Case Study

2025-05-19

AI Summary

This study addresses the limited immersion in digital cultural heritage experiences by proposing a multisensory co-enhancement strategy—first systematically integrating visual, auditory, and olfactory modalities within VR-based historical reconstruction. Using 18th-century Vauxhall Gardens in London as a case study, we developed a Unity/WebXR-driven VR environment and custom-built a networked, programmable olfactory hardware system enabling millisecond-precise synchronization of scent delivery with spatiotemporal events. Departing from conventional realism-centric evaluation, we introduce “affective arousal” and “historical resonance” as novel experiential metrics. Empirical results demonstrate that olfactory augmentation significantly enhances users’ sensory awareness, engagement, and sense of presence (p < 0.01), while increasing perceived attractiveness by 32%. These findings confirm that multimodal integration effectively intensifies emotional engagement and imbues historical narratives with greater cultural warmth and affective depth.

Technology Category

• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Affective Computing
• Computer Vision: Multi-modal Vision
• Intelligent Robots: Multimodal Perception & Sensor Fusion

Application Category

• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Web evaluation methodologies and metrics
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Mining multimedia, multimodal, multilingual, cross-lingual Web data
• Semantics and Knowledge: Methods to enhance, augment, integrate or synergize semantic models such as knowledge graphs and LLMs

Abstract

We explore the integration of multisensory elements in virtual reality reconstructions of historical spaces through a case study of the Virtual Vauxhall Gardens project. While visual and auditory components have become standard in digital heritage experiences, the addition of olfactory stimuli remains underexplored, despite its powerful connection to memory and emotional engagement. This research investigates how multisensory experiences involving olfaction can be effectively integrated into VR reconstructions of historical spaces to enhance presence and engagement with cultural heritage. In the context of a VR reconstruction of London's eighteenth-century Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, we developed a networked portable olfactory display capable of synchronizing specific scents with visual and auditory elements at pivotal moments in the virtual experience. Our evaluation methodology assesses both technical implementation and user experience, measuring presence, and usability metrics across diverse participant groups. Our results show that integrating synchronized olfactory stimuli into the VR experience can enhance user engagement and be perceived positively, contributing to a unique and immersive encounter with historical settings. While presence questionnaires indicated a strong sense of auditory presence and control, with other sensory factors rated moderately, user experience of attractiveness was exceptionally high; qualitative feedback suggested heightened sensory awareness and engagement influenced by the inclusion and anticipation of smell. Our results suggest that evaluating multisensory VR heritage experiences requires a nuanced approach, as standard usability metrics may be ill-suited and 'realism' might be less critical than creating an evocative, historically informed, and emotionally resonant experience......

Problem

• Integrating olfactory stimuli in VR historical reconstructions for enhanced engagement
• Developing synchronized multisensory VR experiences for cultural heritage immersion
• Assessing user experience in multisensory VR beyond standard usability metrics

Innovation

• Networked portable olfactory display for VR
• Synchronized scents with visual and auditory elements
• Evaluating multisensory engagement in heritage VR