Sound Perception in Virtual Environments

2022-12-20
Doğan, Aslı Zeynep
Virtual environments have been developing for a long time and are changing the understanding of a space by means of how we design, perceive and use it. This new understanding of space requires people to adapt by gaining a new type of spatial cognition that can help people to combine the possibilities of a virtual space with the physical space they are used to: by making use of their different sensory skills. The aim of this study is to contribute to the literature on the improvement of the auditory perception and cognition of virtual spaces used for education, training, and gaming purposes. This study proposes to offer a realistic representation of soundscapes in virtual environments according to spatial qualities instead of misleading synthetic sounds by integrating acoustical simulations with the immersive environment and questioning the experience of a regular user. The objectives of this study include: Exploring the virtual environments and soundscape approach in the form of a literature review, Combining the design, cognition, and perception of virtual acoustic environments with Schafer’s soundscape idea, Comparing and understanding the effects of acoustically simulated and immersive virtual soundscape design methods on auditory perception through changing forms and materials by series of cognitive experiments. The results revealed that the participants achieve more accurate results of source-localization, self-localization, and distance guessing in an immersive environment than in the simulated environment. In addition, they were more aware of the soundwalk route, spent more time on tasks, and evaluated the experience more positively in an immersive environment compared to simulations. Despite the placement of the auralizations from the simulations as sound sources in tested immersive environments, there is still a lack of auditory representation of spatial qualities compared to the accurate calculation of acoustical parameters in a simulated environment.

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Citation Formats
A. Z. Doğan, “Sound Perception in Virtual Environments,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2022.