Creation of virtual auditory spaces

Audio Mostly 2006, 2006

Auditory authoring is an essential component in the design of virtual environments and describes the process of assigning sounds and voices to objects within a virtual 3D scene. In a broader sense, auditory authoring also includes the definition of dependencies between objects and different object states, as well as time-and user-dependent interactions in dynamic environments. Our system unifies these attributes within so called auditory textures and allows an intuitive design of 3D auditory scenes for varying applications. Furthermore, it takes care of the different perception through auditory channels and provides interactive and easy to use sonification and interaction techniques. In this paper we present the necessary concepts as well as a system for the authoring of 3D virtual auditory environments as they are used in computer games, augmented audio reality and audio-based training simulations for the visually impaired. As applications we especially focus on augmented audio reality and the applications associated with it. In the paper we provide details about the definition of 3D auditory environments along techniques for their authoring and design, as well an overview of the system itself with a discussion of several examples.

Virtual Reality (VR) is on the edge of becoming the next major delivery plat- form for digital content. Technological progress has made accessible a variety of new tools, allowing development of the necessary hardware and software for VR interaction. The importance of audio in this process is increasing. Audio can intensify the three dimensional experience and immersion of game players and users in other applications. This research focuses on determining and implementing the necessary ele- ments for a system able to deliver Virtual Auditory Display (VAD). The system structure is adapted to fit a new emerging gaming platform: smart- phones. Developing for mobile platforms requires consideration of many con- straints such as memory, processor load and development components. The result is a real-time dynamic VAD, manageable by mobile devices, and able to trigger spatial auditory perception across the azimuthal plane. In this study it is also shown how the VAD developed following custom imple- mentation of selected Head Related Transfer Function (HRTF), is able to generate azimuthal localization of sound events in VR scenarios.

The recreation of an auditory environment in virtual reality, augmented reality, or in remote telepresence is a problem of interest in many application domains. It involves first the capture of sound, and second its subsequent reproduction, in a manner that can fool the perceptual system to believe that the rendered sound is actually where the application requires it to be and consequently to make the user feel as if they are present in the real audio scene.

Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 2008

To be immersed in a virtual environment, the user must be presented with plausible sensory input including auditory cues. A virtual (three-dimensional) audio display aims to allow the user to perceive the position of a sound source at an arbitrary position in three-dimensional space despite the fact that the generated sound may be emanating from a fixed number of loudspeakers at fixed positions in space or a pair of headphones. The foundation of virtual audio rests on the development of technology to present auditory signals to the listener's ears so that these signals are perceptually equivalent to those the listener would receive in the environment being simulated. This paper reviews the human perceptual and technical literature relevant to the modeling and generation of accurate audio displays for virtual environments. Approaches to acoustical environment simulation are summarized and the advantages and disadvantages of the various approaches are presented.

2003

2000

The generation of virtual auditory space (VAS) requires that the sound presented, say over headphones, is filtered in a manner that replicates the normal filtering of the external auditory periphery (the "outer ears"). The sound pressure transformation from a point in space to the eardrum is referred to as the Head Related Transfer Function (HRTF). HRTFs are measures at discrete points in space, while space itself is continuous. We describe the acoustic and psychophysical errors associated with a method of HRTF interpolation that employs a spherical thin-plate spline. Errors in the reconstructed HRTFs were dependant on the number of the locations in the interpolation set and increased markedly for interpolation sets with less than 150 locations (sparse sets). Auditory localization performance began to deteriorate for interpolation sets with less than 150 locations and the localization errors principally followed the cone of confusion. These results indicate that high fidelity continuous VAS can be generated from HRTFs recorded at as few as 150 discrete locations.

The generation of virtual auditory space (VAS) requires that the sound presented, say over headphones, is filtered in a manner that replicates the normal filtering of the external auditory periphery (the "outer ears"). The sound pressure transformation from a point in space to the eardrum is referred to as the Head Related Transfer Function (HRTF). HRTFs are measures at discrete points in space, while space itself is continuous. We describe the acoustic and psychophysical errors associated with a method of HRTF interpolation that employs a spherical thin-plate spline. Errors in the reconstructed HRTFs were dependant on the number of the locations in the interpolation set and increased markedly for interpolation sets with less than 150 locations (sparse sets). Auditory localization performance began to deteriorate for interpolation sets with less than 150 locations and the localization errors principally followed the cone of confusion. These results indicate that high fidelity continuous VAS can be generated from HRTFs recorded at as few as 150 discrete locations.

Proceedings of International …, 2007

We present a method for user-specific audio rendering of a virtual environment that is shared by multiple participants. The technique differs from methods such as amplitude differencing, HRTF filtering, and wave field synthesis. Instead we model virtual microphones within the 3-D scene, each of which captures audio to be rendered to a loudspeaker. Spatialization of sound sources is accomplished via acoustic physical modelling, yet our approach also allows for localized signal processing within the scene. In order to control the flow of sound within the scene, the user has the ability to steer audio in specific directions. This paradigm leads to many novel applications where groups of individuals can share one continuous interactive sonic space.

Forum Acusticum 2023. Proceedings of the 10th Convention of the European Acoustics Association, 2023

Oehler, M., Voong, T.M., Regener, M., da Costa, M. do V.M., & Reuter, C. (2023). Importance of HRTF Personalisation for Audio Rendering in Music-Related Virtual Environments. Forum Acusticum 2023. Proceedings of the 10th Convention of the European Acoustics Association (pp. 2721-2728), Turin, Italy. https://www.doi.org/10.61782/fa.2023.0441

Interdisciplinary Information Sciences, 2012

Three-dimensional sound auralization systems have been developed actively in the last few decades. Such systems are called virtual auditory displays (VADs). In conventional VADs based on head-related transfer functions (HRTFs), a sound source position alone is rendered by disregarding other acoustical phenomena. However, because various sounds surround us in our daily life, we usually hear not only a targeted direct sound but also ambient sounds in an actual sound space. A lack of ambient sound often engenders an unnatural perception of the virtual auditory space presented by VAD based on HRTFs. Therefore, ambient sounds should be included in the VAD system auralization. We investigated an effective rendering method of ambient sound using ordinary colored noise. Furthermore, using subjective evaluations, we discuss the relation between the realism of sound space with ambient sounds and a listener's head movement.