Spatial Acoustic Sound for Virtual Environment Applications

Crystal River Engineering will use its industry expertise in virtual acoustic displays to develop methods of improving three-dimensional acoustic rendering in virtual environments. The Phase I study will focus on analyzing the following areas of improvement: Quality: 1. Modeling ground reflection to increase the accuracy of three-dimensional localization, particularly elevation cues. 2. Modeling Doppler shift to convey an accurate sense of motion in dynamic systems. 3. Customizing head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) for individual listeners. Performance: 1. Creation of a scalable architecture and applications programmer interface to more efficiently utilize the underlying hardware resources. 2. Investigate more efficient algorithms for spatializing audio. All solutions will be tailored toward the efficient real-time rendering of multiple audio sources in a dynamic environment.