A Multi-sensory VR experience:
Living With Smell Dysfunction

A Multi-sensory VR experience that let you experience the daily adventure and danger as a COVID-19 patient with olfactory dysfunction

“The purpose of this film is raising awareness for Smell Dysfunction, an invisible disability that needs to be seen.” —— Yuting Wang

Losing the sense of smell is just like being blind or deaf. It brings danger and uneasiness to the disabled population. However, smell dysfunction is an invisible disability. It’s hard for us to tell a patient apart and to provide more help to them. 

With this film, we hope for more discussion and attention toward smell dysfunction. Create a safe environment for people with smell dysfunction to freely share their dilemmas and stories. If you have any question or thoughts you want to share, please contact us at info@broadar.com

"Living with Smell Dysfunction” is a multi-sensory short film that introduces scents in Virtual Reality (VR) Experience. Through this first-person immersive film in VR, the participant will face daily adventure, confusion and danger as a patient with smell dysfunction. Olfactory disorders simulated in this film are anosmia (absence of smell), hyposmia (diminished sensitivity of smell), and dysosmia (distortion of normal smell). Olfactory dysfunction and disability are tend to be overlooked and invisible to vast population. This novel immersive experience could bring more discussion and attention to the treatment and daily lives of smell dysfunctional patients.

Among 77% of COVID-19 patients who had smell loss during COVID, 5 to 10% still have smell dysfunction after the recovery. Considering the accumulative amount of COVID-19 patients globally (over 581 million as of August 4th), this is a large population. Smell Dysfunction could be caused by any types of viral infection not limited to COVID-19. Some other common causes are allergies, Head injury, Hormonal disturbances, Radiation treatment and conditions that affect the nervous system, such as Parkinson’s disease or Alzheimer’s disease.

The fillm is based on a true story happened in Texas: A toddler alerted his parents after the fire broke out, allowing the family of seven to escape before their Texas home was destroyed.  (Source: People.com, Photo: COURTESY OF KAYLA DAHL)

About the Creator

Yuting Wang is the project director and founder of BroadAR, an AR/VR studio based in San Francisco. She is an award-winning designer and XR artist from the UC, Berkeley. During the pandemic, she witnessed her relatives and one of her close friends suffering from the smell disorder caused by Covid-19. And they had a hard time seeking effective medical treatments from the hospital and support from people around them. Yuting realizes that smell disorder is an invisible disability affecting people's life every minute. The patients’ struggles need to be seen by the public.