Article
Influence of Position Mismatch on the Perception of Early Reflections of One's Own Voice (en)
* Presenting author
Abstract:
In interactive virtual and augmented reality applications the perception of one’s own voice is a vital cue to increase the immersion. A contributing factor to this is the consistency between the virtual representation of the real-world reference. A position mismatch of the user between the virtual and the real scenario may cause a decrease in the users immersion. As a result of limited by computational power, the real-time simulation run-times introduce an inherent position mismatch, especially when full room impulse responses must be calculated. The goal is to identify a just noticeable difference in position change distances required for a plausible or even authentic reproduction. While the update rates for direct sound representation are quite high and those for the late reverberation, especially after the so-called mixing time, are very low, a special focus is set on the early reflections. A listening test was conducted with participants speaking into different virtual rooms using a near-field microphone. The position and orientation of the virtual speaker/receiver was then systematically changed from the exact position to other positions in several distances and directions in order to estimate the perception thresholds of the participants.