Sound and VR

[tolchinski.alexei]

Hello.
I found some problems with sound sorcres in VR-scenes. If head position is far away from centre of VR-room (PlayerDummy in Unigine code), engine will calculate max distance and occlusion from centre of VR-room. In samples "Superposition" and "VR template" editor or engine use sound sources without occlusion and with huge max distance. This is a resourceful decision, but we don't really want to use it. For example, we have sound sorcre near the door on the wall (picture is in attach). We can teleport to another side of the wall and we must hear dull sound. If we turn off parametr "occlusion", sound will not be dull. But if we turn on this option, walk without teleport and centr of room is in the wall, for example, sound always will be dull.
Is any solution to this problem? It will be exsellent, if "ear" will be tied to head, not to player/centr of VR-room.
We use Unigine 2.7.2 and HTC vive.

[moroz]

Hi!

You can try set Attenuation in Sound settings as Linear Clamped.

[tolchinski.alexei]

The sound is next to the switch of light. Centre of VR-room is in front of me at a distance of a meter. Then I was going backwards and player passed through white wall, the sound became bright.
P.S. video don't play sound on site. i tried to use some codecs, but it didn't help. You can download and play with sound

[morbid]

Hi Alexey,

Have you tried changing Attenuation mode? Did it help?

If no, please, build a test scene where we can debug this effect.

Thanks.

 

[tolchinski.alexei]

Hi.
I forgot to write, that it did't help me. I will build a scene as quickly as possible.

[tolchinski.alexei]

There are 8 blocks with occlusion = 1.0f. If center of VR-room the other side of any wall, but human inside wallls, he/she don't hear music, but he/she must. I remind, that must be some distance center of VR-room and person for this effect.vr_template.zip

vr_template.zip

[morbid]

Hello Alexey,

Have you tried HRTF and Reverberation zone?

I've attached a modified world from your sample.

Thanks.

vr_template.world

[tolchinski.alexei]

Hello. I tried to switch on and swith off HRTF, but i didn't play with reverberation zone.
Thanks for modified world, but it calculated reverberation and occlusion regarding centre of VR-room. I specially built the world so that there was no sound outside the walls.

[silent]

Quote

In samples "Superposition" and "VR template" editor or engine use sound sources without occlusion and with huge max distance. This is a resourceful decision, but we don't really want to use it.

Do you have any benchmarks on your actual scene how multiple sound sources with large max distance are affecting overall performance? Just to understand the impact of these approach and why you don't want to use it.

Btw, how large is the total number of sounds that are playing simultaneously? With 1000+ sound sources playing constantly I can see that sound thread is using only 0,08ms, so the performance impact is very low.

Thanks!

[tolchinski.alexei]

The problem is that we need to use occlusion of sounds in our scene, but engine calculate it regarding centre of room, not from point where human is standing in VR. I wrote about this before. I am trying to modifed player and camera for VR to solve this problem.
Maximum count of sounds that are playing simultaneously is above 100, not more. And above 20 must have realistic occlusion, because we can hear them in not one room. And you rigth, at now sounds do not greatly affect performance.

Edited December 24, 2019 by tolchinski.alexei

[morbid]

Alexey, we investigated this problem more carefully, and, unfortunately, there's no VR-ready solution available for 2.7.2.

We addressed this issues later and designed new sound occlusion system. It was released with SDK v2.8. And the amount of changes makes the backporting impossible.

To change sound behavior you need a custom logic based on intersection rays. In other words — your own occlusion manager. The idea is to check whether the player is visible by sound source. If not — change sound settings to imitate occlusion.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

[tolchinski.alexei]

Hello.
I understand this situation with old version of SDK, whith i use. If my solution, which i am creating, will not working, i will try your idea.
Thank you for your time.