Simulated Virtual Market Place - Using Voiscape Communication Medium

Abstract

We are developing a new voice communication medium called voiscape. Voiscape enables natural and seamless bi-directional voice communication by using sound to create a virtual sound room. In a sound room, people can feel others' direction and distance expressed by spatial sounds with reverberations, and they can move freely by using a map of the room. Voiscape enables multivoice -conversations. In a virtual market place that will be realized by voiscape, people can not only buy goods or information but also enjoy talking with merchants and people there. In this demo, a voiscape prototype called VPII is used for realizing such an environment. Unfortunately, because prerecorded voices are used in this demo, the participants cannot talk with merchants. However, the participants can talk each other with small end-to-end latency (less than 200 ms) and will feel the atmosphere of the virtual market place. Prerecorded people and merchants talk each other in English, Japanese and Chinese in parallel and with crossovers, and participants can virtually walk among them and can selectively listen one voice or hear multiple voices at once