In the same way that we experience the real-world through a range of senses, experiencing a virtual environment through multiple sensory modalities may augment both our presence within a scenario and our reaction to it. In this paper, we present Season Traveller, a multisensory virtual reality (VR) narration of a journey through four seasons within a mystical realm. By adding olfactory and haptic (thermal and wind) stimuli, we extend traditional audio-visual VR technologies to achieve enhanced sensory engagement within interactive experiences. Using both subjective measures of presence and elicited physiological responses, we evaluated the impact of different modalities on the virtual experience. Our results indicate that 1) the addition of any singular modality improves sense of presence with respect to traditional audio-visual experiences and 2) providing a combination of these modalities produces a further significant enhancement over the aforementioned improvements. Furthermore, insights into participants' psychophysiology were extrapolated from electrodermal activity (EDA) and heart rate (HR) measurements during each of the VR experiences.

Similar to the concept of a cocktail or mocktail, we present Vocktail (a.k.a. Virtual Cocktail) - an interactive drinking utensil that digitally simulates multisensory flavor experiences. The Vocktail system utilizes three common sensory modalities, taste, smell, and visual (color), to create virtual flavors and augment the existing flavors of a beverage. The system is coupled with a mobile application that enables users to create customized virtual flavor sensations by configuring each of the stimuli via Bluetooth. The system consists of a cocktail glass that is seamlessly fused into a 3D printed structure, which holds the electronic control module, three scent cartridges, and three micro air-pumps. When a user drinks from the system, the visual (RGB light projected on the beverage), taste (electrical stimulation at the tip of the tongue), and smell stimuli (emitted by micro air-pumps) are combined to create a virtual flavor sensation, thus altering the flavor of the beverage. In summary, this paper discusses 1) technical details of the Vocktail system and 2) user experiments that investigate the influences of these multimodal stimuli on the perception of virtual flavors in terms of five primary tastes (i.e. salty, sweet, bitter, sour, and umami). Our results suggest that the combination of these stimuli delivers richer flavor experiences, as compared to separately simulating individual modalities, and indicates that the types of pairings that can be formed between smell and electric taste stimuli.