Listen With Headphones: High Fidelity's New Spacial Audio Simulates Real Life Voices Based on Their Virtual World Locations

Listen with headphones when the rest of the room around you is quiet:

Just implemented in High Fidelity, as Philip Rosedale explains:

To process a sound into 3D, we figure out the angles (up and side to side) between your head and the sound, and then we make a slightly different version of the sound for each of your ears. But when a sound (like someone’s lips) is really close to your head, the model changes both because the angle to each gets quite different, and also because your head now blocks out lot of the sound. So we added a model that does just that — processing the sound differently for sources that are close to your head.

Perfect timing, because I've been thinking about audio quite a bit lately. The most immersive gaming experiences I've had were possible not quite because of the realism of the 3D visuals, but because of the realistic 3D audio.

After all, even the most photorealistic avatars are going to seem artificial. But real voices and other sounds originally recorded from the real world? Properly deployed, they can create a virtual world soundscape that eerily seems real.

Comments

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

Neat. Are objects taken into account when determining what you and others hear--e.g. you're behind a door, hiding under a table, or have your face buried in the sweater of someone you're huging for dear life?