An interactive virtual-environment generator for psychoacoustic research. I: Architecture and implementation

摘要

A system is described which is capable of presenting complex auditory environments to listeners in a perceptually plausible way, such that the listeners feel actually present in them. The listeners can move around in the presented environment and interact with it, e.g., by hand-movements. The virtual environment may encompass multiple direct and reflected sounds from spatially nonstationary sources, their actual number being only limited by current hardware restrictions. The setting of the sound paths (direct and reflected) can be cast after real acoustic scenarios or in any other reasonable way. Consequently, the system forms a flexible tool for psychoacoustic experimentation - among other applications. The system architecture has been designed in such a way that perceptual representation of other modalities (e.g., visual, tactile/thermal) can easily be incorporated. In fact, it represents the kernel of a multimodal virtual-reality generator. In psychoacoustic research this feature allows for providing feedback to non-auditory modalities. [References: 68]