3D visualisation in Panorama displays is a widespread means of communication within a number of areas including architectural-design and experience-oriented applications. At the same time, it has been confirmed that sound similarly provides a powerful instrument which so far has been exploited to a limited degree in 3D visualisation in panoramas and similar interactive 3D display facilities.

TC Electronic is unquestionably one of the world’s leading developers and producers of sound effect equipment, including equipment for spatial simulation of multi-channel music, but has only worked to a limited extent with real-time design of the sound experience, where the listening position and the sound source are in relative motion to each other.

Partners
The partners of the project are Aarhus University and TC Electronic.

Aim
It is the project’s overriding aim to develop and investigate the use of 3D sound in three-dimensional graphical spatial models.

The research goals are:

• to develop the immersion experience in 3D presentations in Panorama using the audio dimension;
• to identify future potentialities for exploiting the audio dimension in conjunction with 3D visualisations within architecture, design and experience-oriented applications;
• to improve simulations of the natural sound experience in an interactive environment.

The industrially oriented goal is:

• to develop real-time generation of 3D sound experience more fully, for example, by increasing the speed of sound processing.

Results
Software will be developed to make it possible in connection with a visual 3D model to move around in it, where 8 sound sources are positioned in the model and the sound reception corresponds to the sound position and orientation with respect to the sound sources and where the sound experience reflects the 3D room’s acoustic properties. In this way the sound can be “coloured” so that it reproduces the virtual environment’s sound-reflective properties more faithfully, and thereby strengthen the immersion experience, which the panorama provides.

An algorithm will be developed, whereby the sound can find its way to the listener in the virtual world. That is, the sound’s path to the listener takes the height of the walls, doors, corridors, etc. into account.

This has the effect that the sound not only reflects the single virtual room, in the way made possible by TC Electronic’s System 6000, but also allows the sound experience to be simulated in virtual worlds consisting of many rooms.

Team
Kim Halskov Madsen, Morten Lervig, Gorm Lai, Bo Degn, and Peter Friis