An Immersive Food Screen? Technology Is Wonderful
You ever just look at some video game food and think “…yeah, I want that.” That special, deep-seeded desire to tear into a well-cooked fantastical steak, or to bite down on an oversized magical fruit. Those cats in Monster Hunter make for some excellent chefs, after all…
Apparently, that desire is prominent enough to warrant tech development. “Taste the TV” (TTTV) is a prototype for what could become your next gaming monitor. Granted, it’d need a lot more support from game development studios to be used that way, but the fact that those odds are nonzero is… interesting. And very tasty, too.
TTTV works by coating the screen with a film infused with different amounts of 10 flavors. Sort of how computers simulate colors by mixing red/green/blue in varying degrees. The whole thing is designed to be as hygienic as possible, of course. Maybe don’t share it with a crowd, but solo use should still be fine.
“The goal is to make it possible for people to have the experience of something like eating at a restaurant on the other side of the world, even while staying at home,” said Homei Miyashita, the university professor behind TTTV. He’s been working on this project over the course of a year, and has priced the cost of a single unit at 100,000 yen. That’s a bit below $900, for reference.
The main use for a project like this would be in the restaurant industry. Online ordering would be a lot easier if you could pre-taste your food. Even in-person, the ability to sample a food item before you buy could be a great way to optimize your order. While the technology’s use in gaming is still a ways away, it’s easy to imagine where it would go. For some games, it just seems like a natural fit!