an Audio Augmented Reality Query

I have thought occasionally about wayfinding applications of surround sound presented over headphones – using a bunch of filters (called Head Related Transfer Functions) to replicate the experience of 3D sound but using only a stereo signal over headphones. As you may know using HRTF you can get very good surround sound – it’s used by games such as Papa Sangre – but can be made more accurate and effective with customised filters for an individual person.

The RNIB see benefit in looking at audio related wayfinding apps for mobile phones with GPS and wanted to know what I could do for them so I started thinking about how sighted people find their way round a strange place.

Then I thought about hardware to make it happen. It would need

BVE2012 Looking good, who’s going? Time to register…

One seminar for me to catch is “Sound of the Games”, Dennis Baxter, Sound Designer for 2012 London Olympics. Interesting if you caught him on radio 4, The Sound Of Sport you’ll know what I mean. Also Immersive audio systems explored – Sound for 3D with Pieter Schillbeeckx, Soundfield and a friend and neighbour of mine at MediaCityUK, Chris Pike from BBC R & D.

http://www.bvexpo.com/

Games People Play: a post from the ETC

The Last Message - A Kinect platform-game that tells a story of the journey of a waveform. The player controls the the amplitude and frequency of the waveform using both arms, and must guide it to the broadcasting tower — with Brian Lee, Ruijie Liu, Shibli Mansuri and Scott Chen. From the Fall 2011 BVW Show

As promised, this post comes from Pittsburgh where I’m working for a week as a guest of Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center (ETC).

The inimitable Don Marinelli, Executive Producer of the ETC

The ETC was created by the inimitable Don Marinelli and the late Randy Pausch combining skills in drama and computer science to produce game designers and “entertainment technologists”. It is a unique place that I have written about before. Students here study on a largely project based masters programme that aims to produce graduates that thrive on cross disciplinary team based project work. 

I’ve been invited here to do some workshops on 3D audio and to inspire students to incorporate some of the work we do at the Acoustics Research Centre at Salford into their projects and