Dissertation Project
In completing my Sound Engineering degree, I wrote a dissertation exploring how varying degrees of physical accuracy influence sound localisation ability in virtual environments. Three degrees of accuracy were used, from the built-in Unity spatialiser to Microsoft’s Project Acoustics, which is a wave acoustics engine that simulates effects such as occlusion, reverberation, and portalling.
A testing environment was constructed in Unity, where participants were tasked with locating a series of sounds played back to them in sequence. Results showed that while increased accuracy tended to correlate with more successful localisation, physical accuracy was a drawback for overly-reverberant situations such as caves, indicating that design decisions need to be taken in finding a desired balance between realism and ease of use, though external elements such as user interface indicators could help.
Visualisation of Project Acoustics simulating a sound source
Environment and source positions used in testing
The dissertation is titled: “Assessing the impact of acoustic simulation on sound localisation within virtual environments”.
An academic poster providing an overview of the project, as well as a PDF of the full dissertation, can be accessed using the buttons below.
Screenshot of participants’ view
Dissertation Project
In completing my Sound Engineering degree, I wrote a dissertation exploring how varying degrees of physical accuracy influence sound localisation ability in virtual environments. Three degrees of accuracy were used, from the built-in Unity spatialiser to Microsoft’s Project Acoustics, which is a wave acoustics engine that simulates effects such as occlusion, reverberation, and portalling.
A testing environment was constructed in Unity, where participants were tasked with locating a series of sounds played back to them in sequence. Results showed that while increased accuracy tended to correlate with more successful localisation, physical accuracy was a drawback for overly-reverberant situations such as caves, indicating that design decisions need to be taken in finding a desired balance between realism and ease of use, though external elements such as user interface indicators could help.
Visualisation of Project Acoustics simulating a sound source
Voxelisation of testing environment for Project Acoustics bake
Environment and source positions used in testing
Screenshot of participants’ view
The dissertation is titled: “Assessing the impact of acoustic simulation on sound localisation within virtual environments”.
An academic poster providing an overview of the project, as well as a PDF of the full dissertation, can be accessed below.