710 research outputs found
Spatial sound for computer games and virtual reality
In this chapter, we discuss spatial sound within the context of Virtual Reality and other synthetic environments such as computer games. We review current audio technologies, sound constraints within immersive multi-modal spaces, and future trends. The review process takes into consideration the wide-varying levels of audio sophistication in the gaming and VR industries, ranging from standard stereo output to Head Related Transfer Function implementation. The level of sophistication is determined mostly by hardware/system constraints (such as mobile devices or network limitations), however audio practitioners are developing novel and diverse methods to overcome many of these challenges. No matter what approach is employed, the primary objectives are very similar—the enhancement of the virtual scene and the enrichment of the user experience. We discuss how successful various audio technologies are in achieving these objectives, how they fall short, and how they are aligned to overcome these shortfalls in future implementations
A framework for realistic 3D tele-immersion
Meeting, socializing and conversing online with a group of people using teleconferencing systems is still quite differ- ent from the experience of meeting face to face. We are abruptly aware that we are online and that the people we are engaging with are not in close proximity. Analogous to how talking on the telephone does not replicate the experi- ence of talking in person. Several causes for these differences have been identified and we propose inspiring and innova- tive solutions to these hurdles in attempt to provide a more realistic, believable and engaging online conversational expe- rience. We present the distributed and scalable framework REVERIE that provides a balanced mix of these solutions. Applications build on top of the REVERIE framework will be able to provide interactive, immersive, photo-realistic ex- periences to a multitude of users that for them will feel much more similar to having face to face meetings than the expe- rience offered by conventional teleconferencing systems
Semantic multimedia remote display for mobile thin clients
Current remote display technologies for mobile thin clients convert practically all types of graphical content into sequences of images rendered by the client. Consequently, important information concerning the content semantics is lost. The present paper goes beyond this bottleneck by developing a semantic multimedia remote display. The principle consists of representing the graphical content as a real-time interactive multimedia scene graph. The underlying architecture features novel components for scene-graph creation and management, as well as for user interactivity handling. The experimental setup considers the Linux X windows system and BiFS/LASeR multimedia scene technologies on the server and client sides, respectively. The implemented solution was benchmarked against currently deployed solutions (VNC and Microsoft-RDP), by considering text editing and WWW browsing applications. The quantitative assessments demonstrate: (1) visual quality expressed by seven objective metrics, e.g., PSNR values between 30 and 42 dB or SSIM values larger than 0.9999; (2) downlink bandwidth gain factors ranging from 2 to 60; (3) real-time user event management expressed by network round-trip time reduction by factors of 4-6 and by uplink bandwidth gain factors from 3 to 10; (4) feasible CPU activity, larger than in the RDP case but reduced by a factor of 1.5 with respect to the VNC-HEXTILE
Object-based reverberation for spatial audio
Object-based audio is gaining momentum as a means for future audio content to be more immersive, interactive, and accessible. Recent standardization developments make recommendations for object formats; however, the capture, production, and reproduction of reverberation is an open issue. In this paper parametric approaches for capturing, representing, editing, and rendering reverberation over a 3D spatial audio system are reviewed. A framework is proposed for a Reverberant Spatial Audio Object (RSAO), which synthesizes reverberation inside an audio object renderer. An implementation example of an object scheme utilizing the RSAO framework is provided, and supported with listening test results, showing that: the approach correctly retains the sense of room size compared to a convolved reference; editing RSAO parameters can alter the perceived room size and source distance; and, format-agnostic rendering can be exploited to alter listener envelopment
Reviews on Technology and Standard of Spatial Audio Coding
Market demands on a more impressive entertainment media have motivated for delivery of three dimensional (3D) audio content to home consumers through Ultra High Definition TV (UHDTV), the next generation of TV broadcasting, where spatial audio coding plays fundamental role. This paper reviews fundamental concept on spatial audio coding which includes technology, standard, and application. Basic principle of object-based audio reproduction system will also be elaborated, compared to the traditional channel-based system, to provide good understanding on this popular interactive audio reproduction system which gives end users flexibility to render their own preferred audio composition.Keywords : spatial audio, audio coding, multi-channel audio signals, MPEG standard, object-based audi
RLFC: Random Access Light Field Compression using Key Views and Bounded Integer Encoding
We present a new hierarchical compression scheme for encoding light field
images (LFI) that is suitable for interactive rendering. Our method (RLFC)
exploits redundancies in the light field images by constructing a tree
structure. The top level (root) of the tree captures the common high-level
details across the LFI, and other levels (children) of the tree capture
specific low-level details of the LFI. Our decompressing algorithm corresponds
to tree traversal operations and gathers the values stored at different levels
of the tree. Furthermore, we use bounded integer sequence encoding which
provides random access and fast hardware decoding for compressing the blocks of
children of the tree. We have evaluated our method for 4D two-plane
parameterized light fields. The compression rates vary from 0.08 - 2.5 bits per
pixel (bpp), resulting in compression ratios of around 200:1 to 20:1 for a PSNR
quality of 40 to 50 dB. The decompression times for decoding the blocks of LFI
are 1 - 3 microseconds per channel on an NVIDIA GTX-960 and we can render new
views with a resolution of 512X512 at 200 fps. Our overall scheme is simple to
implement and involves only bit manipulations and integer arithmetic
operations.Comment: Accepted for publication at Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and
Games (I3D '19
Object-based audio reproduction and the audio scene description format
Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.The introduction of new techniques for audio reproduction such as HRTF-based technology, wave field synthesis and higher-order Ambisonics is accompanied by a paradigm shift from channel-based to object-based transmission and storage of spatial audio. Not only is the separate coding of source signal and source location more efficient considering the number of channels used for reproduction by large loudspeaker arrays, it also opens up new options for a user-controlled interactive sound field design. This article describes the need for a common exchange format for object-based audio scenes, reviews some existing formats with potential to meet some of the requirements and finally introduces a new format called Audio Scene Description Format (ASDF) and presents the SoundScape Renderer, an audio reproduction software which implements a draft version of the ASDF
Parametrization, auralization, and authoring of room acoustics for virtual reality applications
The primary goal of this work has been to develop means to represent acoustic properties of an environment with a set of spatial sound related parameters. These parameters are used for creating virtual environments, where the sounds are expected to be perceived by the user as if they were listened to in a corresponding real space. The virtual world may consist of both visual and audio components. Ideally in such an application, the sound and the visual parts of the virtual scene are in coherence with each other, which should improve the user immersion in the virtual environment.
The second aim was to verify the feasibility of the created sound environment parameter set in practice. A virtual acoustic modeling system was implemented, where any spatial sound scene, defined by using the developed parameters, can be rendered audible in real time. In other words the user can listen to the auralized sound according to the defined sound scene parameters.
Thirdly, the authoring of creating such parametric sound scene representations was addressed. In this authoring framework, sound scenes and an associated visual scene can be created to be further encoded and transmitted in real time to a remotely located renderer. The visual scene counterpart was created as a part of the multimedia scene acting simultaneously as a user interface for renderer-side interaction.reviewe
Object-based audio reproduction and the audio scene description format
Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.The introduction of new techniques for audio reproduction such as HRTF-based technology, wave field synthesis and higher-order Ambisonics is accompanied by a paradigm shift from channel-based to object-based transmission and storage of spatial audio. Not only is the separate coding of source signal and source location more efficient considering the number of channels used for reproduction by large loudspeaker arrays, it also opens up new options for a user-controlled interactive sound field design. This article describes the need for a common exchange format for object-based audio scenes, reviews some existing formats with potential to meet some of the requirements and finally introduces a new format called Audio Scene Description Format (ASDF) and presents the SoundScape Renderer, an audio reproduction software which implements a draft version of the ASDF
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Multimedia delivery in the future internet
The term “Networked Media” implies that all kinds of media including text, image, 3D graphics, audio
and video are produced, distributed, shared, managed and consumed on-line through various networks,
like the Internet, Fiber, WiFi, WiMAX, GPRS, 3G and so on, in a convergent manner [1]. This white
paper is the contribution of the Media Delivery Platform (MDP) cluster and aims to cover the Networked
challenges of the Networked Media in the transition to the Future of the Internet.
Internet has evolved and changed the way we work and live. End users of the Internet have been confronted
with a bewildering range of media, services and applications and of technological innovations concerning
media formats, wireless networks, terminal types and capabilities. And there is little evidence that the pace
of this innovation is slowing. Today, over one billion of users access the Internet on regular basis, more
than 100 million users have downloaded at least one (multi)media file and over 47 millions of them do so
regularly, searching in more than 160 Exabytes1 of content. In the near future these numbers are expected
to exponentially rise. It is expected that the Internet content will be increased by at least a factor of 6, rising
to more than 990 Exabytes before 2012, fuelled mainly by the users themselves. Moreover, it is envisaged
that in a near- to mid-term future, the Internet will provide the means to share and distribute (new)
multimedia content and services with superior quality and striking flexibility, in a trusted and personalized
way, improving citizens’ quality of life, working conditions, edutainment and safety.
In this evolving environment, new transport protocols, new multimedia encoding schemes, cross-layer inthe
network adaptation, machine-to-machine communication (including RFIDs), rich 3D content as well as
community networks and the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) overlays are expected to generate new models of
interaction and cooperation, and be able to support enhanced perceived quality-of-experience (PQoE) and
innovative applications “on the move”, like virtual collaboration environments, personalised services/
media, virtual sport groups, on-line gaming, edutainment. In this context, the interaction with content
combined with interactive/multimedia search capabilities across distributed repositories, opportunistic P2P
networks and the dynamic adaptation to the characteristics of diverse mobile terminals are expected to
contribute towards such a vision.
Based on work that has taken place in a number of EC co-funded projects, in Framework Program 6 (FP6)
and Framework Program 7 (FP7), a group of experts and technology visionaries have voluntarily
contributed in this white paper aiming to describe the status, the state-of-the art, the challenges and the way
ahead in the area of Content Aware media delivery platforms
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