AES New York 2015
Game Audio Track Event G2
Thursday, October 29, 2:15 pm — 3:15 pm (Room 1A21)
Game Audio: G2 - VR Game Audio: The Importance of Sound Propagation
Presenter:Ravish Mehra, Oculus Research - Redmond, WA, USA
Abstract:
Realistic sound propagation is extremely important for VR game audio for improving the sense of presence and immersion of the player in the virtual environment. Sound propagation cues can provide additional information about the game environment (small vs large, inside vs outside) and about events happening outside the field-of-view (such as enemy sneaking from behind). Most current games use simple techniques, such as pre-baked reverb filters, to generate the game sound. These techniques do not respond to the dynamic aspects of the game (e.g., moving sources, listeners, objects) and also do not model the various acoustic effects produced by propagation of sound (e.g., echoes, low-passing, scattering, focusing). In many cases, the sound engine is not given access to the underlying scene geometry to compute these propagation effects. In this presentation, I talk about the importance of accurate sound propagation for VR applications and how it can improve the overall experience of the player in VR games.
