Interactive Geometric Sound Propagation and Rendering

We describe a novel algorithm and system for sound propagation and rendering in virtual environments and media applications. Our approach uses geometric propagation techniques for fast computation of propagation paths from a source to a listener and takes into account specular reflections, diffuse reflections, and edge diffraction. In order to perform fast path computation, we use a unified ray-based representation to efficiently trace discrete rays as well as volumetric ray-frusta. Furthermore, our propagation algorithm scales well with the number of cores, and uses interactive audio rendering technique to generate spatialized audio signals. The overall approach can render sound in dynamic scenes, allowing source, listener, and obstacle motion, and we show its performance on game-like and architectural environments. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first interactive sound rendering system that can perform plausible sound propagation and rendering in dynamic virtual environments. DESCRIPTION OF TECHNIQUES UTILIZED: