VR and Food

Updated scenario

Setting

• comfortable chair that can spin 360 degrees
• table directly in front
• glass with a small opening filled with gin

Experience

• A guide on how to discover the tastes within a gin.
• A 360 view of the (slightly simplified) flavour wheel.
• This begins with the four main flavours, depicted with the keywords and attract representations.
• Then if you look at one these for more than 3 seconds, more specific words start to appear and maybe some imagery.
• Timeline (narration and actions):

Visual introduction TBD.

Hello, welcome to this gin tasting, please make yourself comfortable.

The experience is designed to let you understand and interpret the wonderful complexities of gin through a heightened sensitivity to its scents and flavours.

There is a glass on the table in front of you. It contains xxx gin with a small amount of water to help reveal it’s full profile. Go ahead and pick it up.

Take off the lid and hold the glass about 10 centimetres in front of you.

Gently swirl the gin in the glass to release its aromas. And, being careful to not inhale too strongly, breathe it in.

At first you may be overwhelmed by the vapours of alcohol, so if you like, inhale again to calibrate your senses.

Four main flavours begin to appear.

Spend a moment to think about what you can smell.  Zesty citrus? Fresh florals? Piney juniper? Or Earthy spice?

Explore the flavour notes around you to pin point what you can sense. Look closer at one to reveal its subtleties. 

Looking for more than 3 seconds starts second more detailed animation.

You are now going to allow some of the alcohol to evaporate in order to reveal the gin’s aromas even more acutely. To do this, place your free hand over the top of the glass, and turn it upside down, wetting your palm. Place the glass on the table. Now softly rub your hands together, cup them and bring them towards your nose and inhale again. Can you detect any different flavours?

You are have just experienced the top notes of the gin.

All animations dissolve away.

Keep these in mind as you slowly bring the glass to your mouth and take a small sip of the gin. Let it rest on your tongue for a moment, then move it around your mouth and finally swallow.

Four main flavours appear again.

Are the tastes the same as the smells? Do they change as you move the gin around your mouth?

Take a moment (to look around you) to discern the dominant flavours.

Looking for more than 3 seconds starts second, more detailed, animation.

Think about the traces the gin has left on your palette? Dryness can indicate notes of root botanicals. Sourness can come from citrus. 

Some instruction to turn them back to face the table.

Finally, place the glass back on the table. Consider the flavours you enjoyed most and take a mental note. In the future, this knowledge can point you towards the gin that suits you best.

Thank you. Please take off the headset. You can now enjoy the gin with our recommended tonic and garnish.

• Need to decide
  • What should be shown during the introduction
  • What is the visual style
  • What is the music in the background. This could change according to what you are looking at, but I think this is too complicated at the moment.

Spatial 360 degree flavour wheel VR experience

Taste visualisation test

Gin tasting scenario plan

Why gin? It has a complex flavour profile. It is less explored than wine. I know some things already about it.
Plan for a gin tasting VR experience.
Situation

• comfortable chair
• table directly in front

Materials

• glass with a lid

Sound

• narration taking you through the way you should taste using information from here, here and maybe an interview with an expert
• (is it for one specific gin, or is it a general guide?)
• probably music in the background (should this change to match different flavours?)

Visuals

• no interactivity, more like a video
• abstract representations of smell and taste
• light colour background, translucent, botanical

 



 

Tasting, tasting, 1,2,3

Observations:

• Higher awareness of sounds you make when eating
• Higher awareness of texture in your mouth
• It takes longer to finish a mouthful
• You can’t see what you’re doing
• This causes you to feel a bit more self conscious of your eating

VR tasting experiences

Examples

VR Dining – a series of short VR experiences to watch during of around eating a course of food. Each experience links to the course or wine (eg a vineyard for the wine). However, it seems to bizarre to have this as part of a social experience – as you can see in the photo, people lift off their masks to see each others expressions and communicate. The examples of what the VR experience shows is also a little obvious.

VR winetasting – A very unrealistic render of a vineyard where you have to match virtual wines and tasting notes to ones you try without wearing the headset afterwards. Weird.

VR cocktail – A poetic introduction to drinking a whiskey cocktail which takes you through the Scottish Highlands, giving a context to where the product has come from. You don’t drink the cocktail during the experience, but in fact afterwards.

Conclusions, thoughts, next steps.

• I want my VR/food experience to be personal (even though eating is generally a social experience). Therefore, I am thinking about different contexts – eating on a plane, eating alone, not eating in a normal bar or restaurant.
• I am not interested in recreating real-life food experiences out of context (i.e making something taste like something it is not, drinking without getting drunk, or eating without calories), as I think these will never/not be as good as the real thing.
• An interesting direction could be around making explicit the flavours of comestibles with complex flavour profiles such as wine, gin, chocolate or coffee
• Allison gave the idea of specific tools (e.g. cutlery, a straw, a hat) for eating in VR, which reminded me of a project by Lisa Robertson below

Tasting guides

Wine
Chocolate
Gin
 

Initial Research

Project Nourished. An umbrella of smaller projects around the theme computational gastronomy, with a range of devices to support the experience – a headset, a cup, a bone conduction transfuser, an aromatic diffuser etc. Ideas include eating things you are allergic to, remote feeding, eating therapy, alternate reality dining.

Eye Gaze Input. Unity asset that allows you to use the user’s eye gaze as a selector. Can also be used to analyse the key areas of attention.

Eating a virtual cookie. Researchers in Japan are looking at how altering smell and appearance can change the perception of the taste of a cookie.

VR design tips. A short list of tips and tricks.