Sony has debuted some wild-looking, Star-Trek-holodeck-like technology that, if it works as advertised, will let people step into the world of The Last of Us and get up close and personal with the franchise’s grotesque spore zombies. This new tech will even let you uh…smell them.
At CES 2025, which is happening now, Sony revealed what’s it calling the “Future Immersive Entertainment Concept.” The idea is to use a large array of high-end TVs to create a room that people can walk into and be surrounded by different environments from movies and games.
Here’s a video from Sony showing off the tech and a proof-of-concept version of it using Last of Us game assets.
The concept sounds similar to ILM’s Volume—surround people with video footage of a CG environment—but Sony’s concept is about interactivity and making things more immersive, not making a virtual set for a TV show or movie. And that means that, according to Sony, a future version of this tech will let people actually smell the worlds they enter. One day, you’ll be able to pay Sony $50 for the privilege of walking around a big room filled with 8K monitors and smelling a Clicker’s moldy face and dirty clothes. Truly an amazing future.
Before you get too excited to smell The Last of Us or explore the world of Ghostbusters via Sony’s Holodeck-like tech, keep in mind that this whole concept is still years away from actual production.
Still, I could see a future where Sony combines a more advanced version of this video room idea with something like Disney’s infinite floor to create a hyper-realistic haunted house or digital target range featuring famous characters and guns from PlayStation-produced games.
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