Author's comments on Gröhn, Lokki, and Takala, ICAD 2003

Abstract

Historical background and motivation for ICAD2003 paper is presented. In addition, the research results followed up is briefly overviewed and future work is elaborated. HISTORICAL CONTEXTIdeally virtual reality (VR) is multimodal, meaning that applications should provide feedback to all senses, including visual, aural, and haptic feedback, in order to immerse a user into a virtual world. However, audio is seldom applied and 3D auditory displays are rarely constructed in cavelike systems [Cruz-Neira et al. 1992]. An example of this underemphasis of audio is in a recent book on virtual reality [Sherman and Craig 2003] in which visual displays are presented with 48 pages, haptic devices with 23 pages, and only 13 pages are dedicated for spatial auditory displays.Nevertheless, we foresee that spatial audio has a lot of potential in VR applications. 3D sound could be used in many application fields such as training, simulation, interactive design, entertainment, and visualization. Spatial audio could be applied in several common tasks, e.g., localization of an object, way-finding in navigation, data representation, object selection, and object manipulation.We have had a cavelike virtual environment at the Helsinki University of Technology since 1999 and we each have over 10 years experience and interest in the field of auditory displays. Thus, it is quite natural that our research mission has been to apply spatial audio in VR applications. For that purpose, our virtual environment facility has a multichannel 3D sound reproduction system, which provides good positional audio. In addition, our experience in sonification, psychoacoustics, room acoustics modeling, and spatial audio reproduction forms a strong basis for audio related VR.

Toward accessible 3D virtual environments for the blind and visually impaired

“…[Participant G] Lokki and Gröhn [21] [22] [29] show that audio cues are less accurate for locating sound sources than visual cues, which is supported by comments made by our expert users during interview. However, they conclude that the encoding of elevation information into the auditory cue assists subjects ability to locate their source.…”

Designing auditory pointers

“…Indeed, an audiovisual navigation aid is surely more performant than a navigation that consists solely of either acoustic or visual pointers [3,4,7]. The direct comparison between solely acoustic or visual pointers showed that both are equally effective.…”