Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs pose tracking and 3D near-eye displays to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment, education and business. Other distinct types of VR-style technology include augmented reality and mixed reality, sometimes referred to as extended reality or XR, although definitions are currently changing due to the nascence of the industry.
A head-related transfer function (HRTF), also known as a head shadow, is a response that characterizes how an ear receives a sound from a point in space. As sound strikes the listener, the size and shape of the head, ears, ear canal, density of the head, size and shape of nasal and oral cavities, all transform the sound and affect how it is perceived, boosting some frequencies and attenuating others. Generally speaking, the HRTF boosts frequencies from 2–5 kHz with a primary resonance of +17 dB at 2,700 Hz. But the response curve is more complex than a single bump, affects a broad frequency spectrum, and varies significantly from person to person.
Ambisonics is a full-sphere surround sound format: in addition to the horizontal plane, it covers sound sources above and below the listener.
The Environmental Audio Extensions are a number of digital signal processing presets for audio, present in Creative Technology Sound Blaster sound cards starting with the Sound Blaster Live and the Creative NOMAD/Creative ZEN product lines. Due to the release of Windows Vista in 2007, which deprecated the DirectSound3D API that EAX was based on, Creative discouraged EAX implementation in favour of its OpenAL-based EFX equivalent – though at that point relatively few games used the API.
3D audio effects are a group of sound effects that manipulate the sound produced by stereo speakers, surround-sound speakers, speaker-arrays, or headphones. This frequently involves the virtual placement of sound sources anywhere in three-dimensional space, including behind, above or below the listener.
Scott Fisher is the Professor and Founding Chair of the Interactive Media Division in the USC School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California, and Director of the Mobile and Environmental Media Lab there. He is an artist and technologist who has worked extensively on virtual reality, including pioneering work at NASA, Atari Research Labs, MIT's Architecture Machine Group and Keio University.
Virtual surround is an audio system that attempts to create the perception that there are many more sources of sound than are actually present. In order to achieve this, it is necessary to devise some means of tricking the human auditory system into thinking that a sound is coming from somewhere that it is not. Most recent examples of such systems are designed to simulate the true (physical) surround sound experience using one, two or three loudspeakers. Such systems are popular among consumers who want to enjoy the experience of surround sound without the large number of speakers that are traditionally required to do so.
Sensaura, a division of Creative Technology, was a company that provided 3D audio effect technology for the interactive entertainment industry. Sensaura technology was shipped on more than 24 million game consoles and 150 million PCs . Formed in 1991, Sensaura developed a range of technologies for incorporating 3D audio into PC's and consoles.
Aureal Semiconductor Inc. was an American electronics manufacturer, best known throughout the mid-late 1990s for their PC sound card technologies including A3D and the Vortex The company was the reincarnation of the, at the time, bankrupt Media Vision Technology, who developed and manufactured multimedia peripherals such as the Pro Audio Spectrum 16.
GameCODA is an audio middleware product by Sensaura designed for game developers to create realistic sound environments in video games. It allows development for the following platforms: Microsoft Windows, Xbox, Xbox 360, PlayStation 2 and GameCube. GameCODA incorporates several audio technologies that were developed by Sensaura, which includes Sensaura's HRTF algorithms, MacroFX™, ZoomFX™ and EnvironmentFX™.
Future Vision Technologies (FVT), operating from 1991 to 1995, was part of the second wave of companies working to commercialize virtual reality technology. The company was founded by a team out of the Advanced Digital Systems Laboratory in the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The three original members, Matt Klapman, David Frerichs, and Kevin Lee, were later joined by John Belmonte. The company ceased to be an active entity when its PC card business was sold to Fujitsu Microelectronics.
Creative Technology Ltd., or Creative Labs Pte Ltd., is a Singaporean multinational technology company. The principal activities of the company and its subsidiaries consist of the design, manufacture and distribution of digitized sound and video boards, computers and related multimedia and personal digital entertainment products. It also partners with mainboard manufacturers and laptop brands to embed its Sound Blaster technology on their products.
Char Davies is a Canadian contemporary artist known for creating immersive virtual reality (VR) artworks. A founding director of Softimage, Co, she is considered a world leader in the field of virtual reality and a pioneer of bio-feedback VR. Davies is based in rural Quebec and San Francisco.
Oculus Rift is a discontinued line of virtual reality headsets developed and manufactured by Oculus VR, a virtual reality company founded by Palmer Luckey that is widely credited with reviving the virtual reality industry. It was the first virtual reality headset to provide a realistic experience at an accessible price, utilizing novel technology to increase quality and reduce cost by orders of magnitude compared to earlier systems. The first headset in the line was the Oculus Rift DK1, released on March 28, 2013. The last was the Oculus Rift S, discontinued in April 2021.
Auralization is a procedure designed to model and simulate the experience of acoustic phenomena rendered as a soundfield in a virtualized space. This is useful in configuring the soundscape of architectural structures, concert venues, and public spaces, as well as in making coherent sound environments within virtual immersion systems.
Perceptual-based 3D sound localization is the application of knowledge of the human auditory system to develop 3D sound localization technology.
VREAM, Inc. was a US technology company that functioned between 1991 and 1996. It was one of the first companies to develop PC-based software for authoring and viewing virtual reality (VR) environments.
Microsoft HoloLens is an augmented reality (AR)/mixed reality (MR) headset developed and manufactured by Microsoft. HoloLens runs the Windows Mixed Reality platform under the Windows 10 operating system. Some of the positional tracking technology used in HoloLens can trace its lineage to the Microsoft Kinect, an accessory for Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Xbox One game consoles that was introduced in 2010.
3D sound is most commonly defined as the daily human experience of sounds. The sounds arrive to the ears from every direction and varying distances, which contribute to the three-dimensional aural image humans hear. Scientists and engineers who work with 3D sound work to accurately synthesize the complexity of real-world sounds.
A virtual reality game or VR games is a video game played on virtual reality (VR) hardware. Most VR games are based on player immersion, typically through head-mounted display unit or headset with stereoscopic displays and one or more controllers.
