#vr lab

The purpose of VR is to lead users into a simulated space, making them sense the virtual world as much as the real world. Through this lab visit, I figure out that the VR experience is not only taking experiencers into a virtual image world, however, the auditory element is also one significant component that helps to build up the virtual world.

 The first stop of the visit is Wesley Heard introducing us the 3D modelling tools and 3D engine in a VR game. Basically, he utilizes Autodesk 3D Max to model the virtual environment and then, combines the model with the Unreal Engine. The 3DMax is widely used in 3D modelling field. It is not difficult to use, and has powerful cross-platform ability. In terms of the Unreal Engine, this is an open source image processing engine, which allows the developer to develop a VR game, video or some other 3D product with its support. The project that Wesley is doing now is a horror-theme VR game, he uses the tools above to develop the experience and uses the Oculus Rift, which is an advanced VR glasses, to demonstrate the outcomes.

 The Oculus Rift is one of the most popular VR image demonstration solutions in VR field. It provides the immersive visual experience to the experiencer and also provides convenient developing kit to the developers.

                        The next stop is the sound effect designer Nathan Corporal. He introduced us how to handle VR scenario sound effects. We sense our tangible world via visual image and auditory sound, so the VR world is supposed to be the same. The image aspect can be achieved by 3D modelling and graphics engine. However, the difference between the simulated digital sound and real world sound is that in the real world, people can hear sound from any direction, but the digital sound only has two channels. To enhance the VR experience, the sound should effect should be the 3D positional audio. Therefore, Nathan told us about the theory and the tools that he uses in order to record and processing the 3D audio.

  Nathan told us that there are still a lot of problems have to be solved when it comes to recording and editing 3D audio. At current stage, the solution that he is using is Reaper and FMOD. The Reaper is a digital audio processing workstation produced by Cockos. It provides audio recoding, editing, and special audio effect rendering functions to help audio designers to deal with complex audio production. The FMOD is another auditory processing workstation software. Different from the Reaper, the FMOD can debug and use code to editing audio files. Besides, the most fascinating function is that it has 3D sound engine to process the positional audio signal and simulates the acoustic source. With these two software, producing 3D positional audio becomes accessible.