Virtual Reality (VR) is becoming an ever more important technology in many areas of life and society. Currently, Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR) experience rapidly progress, driven by the entertainment sector (e.g. 3D computer games) and wearable computing (e.g. head-mounted displays, like Google Glass). These advances hold a great potential for artistic applications, like interactive concerts and experimental music. The potential of VR and AR reaches further though. We can benefit from these technologies by using them as research and solution methods, by studying facts in the computer-generated virtual world and obtain findings, which hold in reality. This makes VR an important tool for decision-making, engineering, research and teaching (e.g. improving the acoustics in buildings or the assessment of traffic noise). Therefore, it is essential that humans perceive the virtual simulations realistically and become immersed into them. Multimodality supports the feeling of immersion. Besides vision, the auditory sense has great significance.

 

This talk gives an overview on Virtual Acoustics, the discipline of simulating sound in virtual environments and creating three-dimensional auditory stimuli. Analog to visualization (making something visible), one speaks of auralization (making something audible). Auralization is a complex procedure, involving several disciplines (e.g. physics, maths, signal processing, computer science, psychology) and considering many different aspects (e.g. radiation of sound, synthesis of source signals, sound propagation and reverberation (indoors and outdoors), movement of sources and listeners and finally the spatial reproduction of sound using headphones or loudspeakers). Interactive simulations in real-time are particularly challenging. They demand sophisticated algorithms and a profound knowledge about the human perception, in order to keep response times minimal. This presentation outlines the physical background of acoustics, introduces the fundamental simulation concepts (numerical and geometrical), input parameters and their measurement (acoustic surface parameters), as well as real-time signal processing techniques for auralization (digital filtering). The methods are illustrated by several VR applications at RWTH Aachen university.