Evaluating Environmental Sounds from a Presence Perspective for Virtual Reality Applications
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Research Article Evaluating Environmental Sounds from a Presence Perspective for Virtual Reality Applications Rolf Nordahl Medialogy, Aalborg University Copenhagen, Lautrupvang 15, 2750 Ballerup, Denmark Correspondence should be addressed to Rolf Nordahl, [email protected] Received 15 January 2010; Accepted 31 August 2010 Academic Editor: Andrea Valle Copyright © 2010 Rolf Nordahl. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. We propose a methodology to design and evaluate environmental sounds for virtual environments. We propose to combine physically modeled sound events with recorded soundscapes. Physical models are used to provide feedback to users’ actions, while soundscapes reproduce the characteristic soundmarks of an environment. In this particular case, physical models are used to simulate the act of walking in the botanical garden of the city of Prague, while soundscapes are used to reproduce the particular sound of the garden. The auditory feedback designed was combined with a photorealistic reproduction of the same garden. A between-subject experiment was conducted, where 126 subjects participated, involving six different experimental conditions, including both uni- and bimodal stimuli (auditory and visual). The auditory stimuli consisted of several combinations of auditory feedback, including static sound sources as well as self-induced interactive sounds simulated using physical models. Results show that subjects’ motion in the environment is significantly enhanced when dynamic sound sources and sound of egomotion are rendered in the environment.
1. Introduction The simulation of environmental sounds for virtual reality (VR) applications has reached a level of complexity that most of the sonic phenomena which happen in the real world can be reproduced using physical principles or procedural algorithms. However, until now little research has been performed on how such sounds can contribute to enhance sense of presence and immersion when inserted in a multimodal environment. Although sound is one of the fundamental modalities in the human perceptual system, it still contains a large area for exploration for researchers and practitioners of VR [1]. While research has provided different results concerning multimodal interaction among the senses [2], several questions remain in how one can utilize to the highest potential audiovisual phenomena when building interactive VR experiences. As a matter of fact, following the computational capabilities of evolving technology, VR research has moved from being focused on unimodality (e.g., the visual modality) to new ways to elevate the perceived feeling of being virtually present and to engineer new technologies that may offer a
higher degree of immersion, here understood as presence considered as immersion [3]. Engineers have been interested in the audio-visual interaction from the perspective of opt
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