Design and Implementation of a Multimedia Opera

While the traditional notion of "opera" describes a production that incorporates musical elements with other art forms and media, the conceptual and technical considerations required to mount an electronic multimedia opera add significant layers of complexity. Design issues including projecting visual media, the implementing of an immersive audio environment and maintaining synchronization (between live singers and digital music, 3D computer animation, stage lighting and projected imagery) add to the standard list of compositional and production challenges. An overview of the design and implementation of such a production, StarChild: The Opera, offers a primer in the musical and extra-musical considerations that are required to realize a large-scale composition in an electronic mixed media environment. (This short paper was presented as a poster at the 1996 International Computer Music Conference in Hong Kong. It is published in the proceedings.

COOLVR: Implementing Audio in a Virtual Environment Toolkit

COOLVR (Complete Object Oriented Library for Virtual Reality) is a toolkit currently being developed at the Graphics, Visualization, and Usability Center (GVU) at Georgia Tech. The toolkit is written to allow programmers to easily create virtual environments (VE's) which will compile cross platform. Unlike most VE toolkits which focus effort primarily on the visual senses, COOLVR aims to equally engage both the sense of sight and the sense of hearing. One of the main design goals of the COOLVR toolkit is to give the programmer an intuitive method to enrich the virtual world with auditory cues. COOLVR uses a set of cross platform audio rendering modules to conduct real time sound processing. By providing potential designers with the capability of easily integrating spatial audio in a virtual world, a heightened level of immersivity or presence can be achieved in COOLVR environments. (This short paper was presented at the 1997 International Conference on Auditory Display at Xerox PARC

The NAVE: Design and implementation of a 3D audio system for a low cost spatially immersive display

Presented of the 6th International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD), Atlanta, GA, April 2-5, 2000The NAVE is a low cost spatially immersive display system developed by the Georgia Tech Virtual Environments Group. The NAVE audio environment uses two independent speaker systems driven by a dedicated audio PC with two sound cards. The speakers are amplified by four Pioneer 200 watt receivers. The primary system utilizes 4 Bose Acoustimass speakers to create a three dimensional soundfield. A Sound Blaster LIVE! audio card is used for audio spatialization. The secondary system steers bass audio content across four zones embedded in the NAVE floor. Bass audio is moved within the zones using a Diamond Monster Sound MX200 PC sound card. Bass vibration effects are maximized by six Aura Bass Shaker Pro's along with seat mounted subwoofer speakers. The steerable bass audio system can be used to create audio-tactile effects for simulating the vibration of vehicles, thunder, explosions, shockwaves, and earthquakes. A custom real-time audio effects application programming interface (API) allows virtual environment designers to attach sounds to graphic entities. The spatial position of sounds are synchronized with the position of their associated graphical objects. The API is also capable of reproducing real world phenomena including reverberation and doppler effects

COOLVR: Implementing audio in a virtual environments toolkit

Presented at the 4th International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD), Palo Alto, California, November 2-5, 1997.COOLVR (Complete Object Oriented Library for Virtual Reality) is a toolkit currently being developed at the Graphics, Visualization, and Usability Center (GVU) at Georgia Tech. The toolkit is written to allow programmers to easily create virtual environments (VE's) which will compile cross platform. Unlike most VE toolkits which focus effort primarily on the visual senses, COOLVR aims to equally engage both the sense of sight and the sense of hearing. One of the main design goals of the COOLVR toolkit is to give the programmer an intuitive method to enrich the virtual world with auditory cues. COOLVR uses a set of cross platform audio rendering modules to conduct real time sound processing. By providing potential designers with the capability of easily integrating spatial audio in a virtual world, a heightened level of immersivity or presence can be achieved in COOLVR environments

Wearable Computing

We present two examples of interfaces for Mobile Mixed Reality Conferencing. The WearCom interface surrounds the user with a wearable body-stabilized communications space, while the Tangible Conferencing interface represents remote collaborators are live virtual video images attached to real objects. Both interfaces run on commercially available wearable computers, and they demonstrate how Mixed Reality techniques can be used to overcome the limitations of traditional video and audio conferencing

Sonopticon: Auditory Display in Automobile Interface Design

The multiplicity of interface elements in an automobile can present a hinderance to usability and safety. We prototyped and conducted preliminary testing of an automobile driving interface. Our key design principle was to enhance driver situational awareness while minimizing distractions. We aimed to accomplish this task by exploiting the benefits of an auditory display coupled with a minimized visual head up display (HUD). Results from our testing indicated that this approach could be an effective method of improving driver safety in hazardous situations