Category: VR Audio

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3D Sound Labs VR Audio Kit Introduces Bluetooth Support

3D Sound Labs are one of the best-known specialists in the area of immersive 3D audio. Proper use of sound can make a he difference in the immersiveness of a virtual reality (VR) experience. In order to make creating 3D soundscapes easier, 3D Sound Labs have released an update to its VR Audio Kit SDK for Unity that introduces new features.

The latest version of the 3D Sound Labs SDK introduces several bug fixes and general quality improvements, as well as introducing Bluetooth support directly into the SDK, to allow users to use wireless Bluetooth headphones.

The VR Audio Kit allows users to make sound effects and environmental noises sound like they originate from a particular source. This allows VR users to accurately locate the source of a particular sound. This can be used as an aural ‘cue’ that lets developers direct the player’s attention in a particular direction. The VR audio Kit also allows for sound ‘reflections’ which can be adjusted according to distance and angle, creating a more realistic and immersive effects.

3d sound labs logo

The latest version of the VR Audio Kit works natively with the Unity engine and has been optimised for use in mobile VR applications. It has been engineered to produce ambisonic and object-based audio with minimal CPU consumption.

The updated version of the VR Audio Kit is available for download from the 3D Sound Labs website. A free evaluation version is available for users to test if the software is right for them. 3D Sound Labs are also keen to receive feedback from the community on new features and improvements to add to the SDK.

VRFocus will bring you further information on 3D Sound Labs and VR as it becomes available.

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NVIDIA Shows How Physically-based Audio Can Greatly Enhance VR Immersion

Positional audio for VR experiences—where noises sound as if they are coming from the correct direction—has long been understood as an important part of making VR immersive. But knowing which direction sounds are coming from is only one part of the immersive audio equation. Getting that directional audio to interact in realistic ways with the virtual environment itself is the next challenge, and getting it right came make VR spaces feel far more real.

Positional audio in some form or another is integrated into most VR applications today (some use better integrations and mixes than others). Positional audio tells you about the direction of various sound sources, but it misses out completely on telling you about the environment in which the sound is located, something that we are unconsciously tuned to understand as our ears and brain interpret direct sounds mixed in with reverberations, reflections, diffractions, and more complex audio interactions that change based on the shape of the environment around us and the materials of that environment. Sound alone can give us a tremendous sense of space even without a corresponding visual component. Needless to say, getting this right is important to making VR maximally immersive, and that’s where physically-based audio comes in.

Photo courtesy NVIDIA

Physically-based audio is a simulation of virtual sounds in a virtual environment, which includes both directional audio and audio interactions with scene geometry and materials. Traditionally these simulations have been too resource-intensive to be able to do quickly and accurately enough for real-time gaming. NVIDIA has dreamt up a solution which takes those calculations and runs them on their powerful GPUs, fast enough, the company says, for real-time use even in high-performance VR applications. In the video heading this article, you can hear how much information can be derived about the physical shape of the scene from the audio alone. Definitely use headphones to get the proper effect; it’s an impressive demonstration, especially to me toward the end of the video when occlusion is demonstrated as the viewing point goes around the corner from the sound source.

That’s the idea behind the company’s VRWorks Audio SDK, which was released today during the GTC 2017 conference; it’s part of the company’s VRWorks suite of tools to enhance VR applications on Nvidia GPUs. In addition to the SDK, which can be used to build positional audio into any application, Nvidia is also making VRWorks Audio available as a plugin for Unreal Engine 4 (and we’ll likely see the same for Unity soon), to make it easy for developers to begin working with physically-based audio in VR.

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Latest Unity Beta Gets NVIDIA VRWorks for Enhanced Rendering Features

The company says that VRWorks Audio is the “only hardware-accelerated and path-traced audio solution that creates a complete acoustic image of the environment in real time without requiring any ‘pre-baked’ knowledge of the scene. As the scene is loaded by the application, the acoustic model is built and updated on the fly. And audio effect filters are generated and applied on the sound source waveforms.”

VRWorks Audio repurposes the company’s OptiX ray-tracing engine which is typically used to render high-fidelity physically-based graphics. For VRWorks Audio, the system generates invisible rays representing sound wave propagation, tracing the path from its origin to the various surfaces it will interact with, and eventually to its arrival at the listener.

Road to VR is a proud media sponsor of GTC 2017.

The post NVIDIA Shows How Physically-based Audio Can Greatly Enhance VR Immersion appeared first on Road to VR.

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Dirac Research will VR Audio verbessern – mit 4,8 Millionen Dollar

Damit Virtual Reality auch wirklich ein immersives Erlebnis wird, benötigt man auch guten Sound. Das schwedische Unternehmen Dirac Research konnte nun 4,8 Millionen Dollar über Fundraising einsammeln.

Dirac: Zahlungskräftige Investoren

Die Audio-Industrie macht ernst. Nicht zuletzt hat sich Dirac auf die Fahnen geschrieben, die Welt mit der „Future of Sound“ zu beglücken. Für das Fundraising haben nun einige zahlungskräftige Investoren in ihr Portemonaie gegriffen. Dazu gehören Rami Yacoub, unter anderem Musikproduzent für Britney Spears, One Direction und Backstreet Boys, Staffan Persson, CEO von Sweda Capital und AAC Technologies aus China.

Audio-Darstellung noch nicht immersiv

Die neue Audio-Technik Dirac VR setzt äußerst fein getuned auf HRTFs (Head-Related-Transfer-Functions). Das bedeutet, dass die Bewegungen des Kopfes, mit denen des Torsos abgestimmt werden können, und der Sound darauf eingestellt wird. Laut Diraq soll HRTF endgültig dazu beitragen, realistische Geräuschkulissen und audio-immersive Umgebungen in der VR abzubilden. Wenn zum Beispiel auf der linken Seite des VR-Nutzers ein Telefon klingelt, hört man es auf der linken Seite eine Sekunde schneller als auf der rechten. So soll dem Gehirn die instinktive Lokalisation des Geräusches ermöglicht werden. Momentan sei das noch nicht befriedigend möglich, weshalb die bisherige Audio-Erlebnisse nicht komplett die Realität abbilden können.

Dirac will mit den eingesammelten 4,8 Millionen Dollar, das Fundament dafür legen, zum Weltmarktführer im Bereich immersiver Sound für Virtual und Augmented Reality zu werden.

Der Beitrag Dirac Research will VR Audio verbessern – mit 4,8 Millionen Dollar zuerst gesehen auf VR∙Nerds. VR·Nerds am Werk!

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PSVR Gets Rift-Like Audio Solution with ‘Mantis’ Aftermarket Headphones

Peripheral manufacturer Bionik are building a Rift-life aftermarket integrated headphone solution for the PlayStation VR called ‘Mantis’ and, they look pretty neat too.

Regardless of which VR headset you personally may prefer, there’s little argument that the Oculus Rift’s solution to the problem of tangled, headphone cables is pretty elegant. By contrast, having to deal with separate ‘phones and the inevitable cable tangles they involve with the HTC Vive and PlayStation VR is a hassle.

PSVR-headphones-bionik-mantis (1)For PSVR at least, owners of Sony’s VR headset can rejoice as peripheral manufacturer Bionik has announced it’s bringing a solution to the device that looks very much inspired by the Oculus Rift’s. The Mantis comprises clip-on, on ear headphones that slot onto the PSVR’s headband, of course then hooking into the standard 3.5mm jack on the control unit as any other would. As with the Rift, once the headphones are in place, they can be flipped up and adjusted for comfort – or to temporarily just get them out of the way.

The solution looks good, although Bionik does seem to be reaching a little for filling out its feature list quoting “Creates an immersive experience that puts you directly in the game” – so, like any other headset really. Marketing spiel aside, we suspect Bionik may find a market for the add-on devices, especially as the recently announced install base is fast approaching 1 Million units. The Mantis is marked as ‘coming soon’ and is currently priced $49.99.

SEE ALSO
Official: Sony Sold Nearly 1 Million PlayStation VR Headsets in 4.5 Months, Despite Limited Stock

PSVR-headphones-bionik-mantis (2)

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Valve Launches Free Steam Audio SDK Beta to Give VR Apps Immersive 3D Sound

Valve today announced the Steam Audio SDK, a spatial audio plugin that the company says is made is designed to “enhance all interactive products, specifically VR applications.” The company has launched a beta of the SDK today supporting Unity, and support for Unreal Engine is on the way.

Realistic sound is an important but often underappreciated aspect of the immersion equation in VR. Basic stereo output works well enough for gaming on monitors, where the world is abstracted away from an immersive first-person view. But when your eyes are convinced they’re inside the game thanks to VR, your brains has certain expectations for how the world around you should sound. Our brain literally uses audio cues to understand spatial information, especially about what’s not currently in our line-of-site.

VR audio isn’t a ‘solved’ problem, but some of the solutions available today make a huge difference. And now, developers wanting to implement spatial audio in their VR apps have a free option, thanks to Valve’s newly announced Steam Audio SDK. Available now with support for Unity, the Steam Audio SDK will also soon support Unreal Engine. The company says that use of the spatial audio tool is completely open and supports Windows, Linux, MacOS, and Android, and is not restricted to any particular VR device or to Steam, which means developers building VR apps for the Oculus Rift or Gear VR, for instance, are welcome to use the tool. The SDK also currently includes a C API for integration into other game engines and middleware.

The technology powering the Steam Audio SDK is a continuation of the work of Impulsonic, who developed the Phonon audio tools, which has been acquired by Valve.

“Steam Audio is an advanced spatial audio solution that uses physics-based sound propagation in addition to HRTF-based binaural audio for increased immersion,” Valve wrote in a statement issued to Road to VR. “Spatial audio significantly improves immersion in VR; adding physics-based sound propagation further improves the experience by consistently recreating how sound interacts with the virtual environment.”

Historically, realistic physics-based sound calculations have been computationally restrictive, especially for real-time applications, and efforts to simplify some of the underlying physics surrounding sound wave interaction with 3D geometry have results in decent, but not perfect spatial audio. With the rise of VR, more interest has been given to this area, and companies like NVIDIA and others have taken a stab at the problem.

According to Valve, one of the biggest benefits of the Steam Audio SDK is automatic real-time sound propagation:

In reality, sound is emitted from a source, after which it bounces around through the environment, interacting with and reflecting off of various objects before it reaches the listener. Developers have wanted to model this effect, and tend to manually (and painstakingly!) approximate sound propagation using hand-tuned filters and scripts. Steam Audio automatically models these sound propagation effects.

You can find more details on the features supported by the Steam Audio SDK here.

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