Swedish digital sound solution specialist Dirac Research has been working on improving 3D audio processing for virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR)for sometime now, and later this month the company will be showcasing its latest advancements. During the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2018 in Barcelona, Spain, Dirac Research will be debuting its second-generation Dirac VR solution to attendees.
With this new version of Dirac VR, Dirac Research aims to deliver an upgraded 3D audio engine, increased power and processing efficiency, and a Unity plugin to manufacturers, Unity content developers, and end-users, alike.
The upgraded 3D audio engine produces improved audio performance, smoother sound renderings, and more accurate positioning of sound in the virtual plane. While the first generation solution allowed for the fixed positioning of individual sound sources on the horizontal plane, alone, Dirac VR now allows for dynamic positioning on both the horizontal and vertical planes – generating a 360-degree ‘audio sphere’ around each end-user, where sound moves freely in all directions.
“By fixing sound sources in the horizontal plane, virtual environments such as movie theaters can be recreated with pinpoint accuracy – as both the end-user and the audio sources remain in static locations,” stated Lars Isaksson, Dirac General Manager & Business Director of AR/ VR. “Our second-generation Dirac VR, however, places each user at the center of an ‘audio sphere’, thereby allowing users to experience, for example, the sound of wind whipping as it swirls around one’s head or an airplane arriving and departing on a tarmac.”
“Producing realistic audio experiences in virtual environments is one of the most challenging projects to be tackled by our industry; yet we, as both an industry and company, understand the enormous opportunity presented by effective and immersive VR experiences – for which a perfected 3D audio solution is required,” said Mathias Johansson, Dirac Research’s Co-Founder & CEO in a statement. “With the second-generation Dirac VR solution, we proudly deliver to our industry the next critically-important tool to bringing our virtual dreams to life.”
Dirac VR will be available for demo at MWC 2018, from 26th February through 1st March 2018. For any further updates keep reading VRFocus.