Entertainment Industry Sound Design Techniques to Improve Presence and Training Performance in VE

Abstract

The design and development of auditory interfaces in virtual environments has lagged behind visual interfaces. However, the auditory interface should be considered an essential component to VE that adds ambience, emotion, and a sense of presence to the simulation. The entertainment industry has long recognized the importance of sound to add these perceptual elements to film and videogames. As a result, the film industry has devoted many of its resources to developing techniques for producing sound effects and ambiences that evoke emotional responses and immerse the viewer in the film. Although interactive media present unique challenges to these techniques, many of them can be readily applied. Additionally, audio engineering techniques widely used by the film industry can be applied to improving the quality of virtual environments. If the same care and artistry is applied to virtual environments as in film, the sense of presence should be improved and it is possible that training effectiveness will also be enhanced. The current paper will summarize efforts of the MOVES Institute Immersive Audio Research Laboratory to work with the entertainment industry (film, videogame, and engineering) to adapt these techniques to virtual environments. Research examining the use of physiological response measures(temperature, electrodermal activity, heart rate, etc) to assess emotion and presence in VE will also be examined. In particular, we have shown that speaker systems contribute more to emotion (and we argue presence) than headphone systems.