The sound dimension

Although the spotlight of virtual reality research has been on providing views of simulated scenes and objects, some researchers have chosen to study how to fool other senses: hearing, touch, and even smell, into perceiving what is not there. They have good reason: the virtual environments that are best at stimulating multiple senses are also best at evoking a feeling of presence and immersion. Next to sight, hearing is the sense on which people rely the most. So sounds, too, can play an extremely critical role in a distributed virtual environment (DVE). The virtual reality (VR) experience is more satisfying when sound adds to or reinforces other DVE information. The paper discusses the variety of sound in VR systems and considers the selection of software and hardware for these uses of audio in DVE systems.