[openal] Real-time interactive 3D audio landscape

[Xavier Wielemans]

Hi everyone,

µMy name is Xavier, I am a free-lance interactive multimedia
designer/developer, mainly active in the museal/artistic/cultural domain.

I am looking into OpenAL in the context of an art installation I'm working
on, on behalf of Constantin Dupuis, student at Le
Fresnoy<http://www.lefresnoy.net/en>
.

[ Le Fresnoy is a french contemporary art studio that is also a very high
level school (2 years program for a selection of 25 students per year. The
school program is focused on each student creating and producing at the end
of each year a piece of contemporary art (installation or performance)
involving in most cases quite a lot of interactive media technologies.

All these creations are integrated in the
Panorama<http://panorama15.lefresnoy.net/>exhibition that opens each
year in June. This year will be the 16th
edition, and Panorama has now gained much public awareness and critic
recognition. It's hard to beleive that all the great work showcased in the
exhibition is "only student work". ]

Constantin being an experimental musician and sound designer, his idea for
this year is to offer visitors the possibility to navigate through a
virtual 3D scene, in real-time. Nothing very original so far, except that
in his case the 3D scene is made of sound only. The user/visitor trying the
installation will be blindfolded, seated in a custom-designed chair fitted
with a navigation pad, and given a pair of stereo headphones, nothig else.
He/she will walk through the virtural environment using the pad controls
and perceive a 3D spatialized sonic landscape. By moving around, he/she
will gradually build an internal representation of that sonic world and be
able to orient him/herself.

Basically, the scene will be composed of static audio sources/clips, each
of them mono and positionned in a fixed point of the 3D scene. Only the
listener will move through the scene, getting closer or further away from
the sources. (Only exception: a virtual "character" consisting of a moving
audio source will also be present in the scene, moving in reaction to the
user's motion, following or guiding him in the virtual world.)

Binaural 3D audio rendering is essential, of course, to give the user a
clear perception of the audio sources's 3D positions.

Constantin asked me to develop for him a sort of "editor" allowing him to
integrate sources in the 3D scene and to position them precisely, and a
"player" allowing the users to navigate through the resulting 3D scene
(without being able to edit/modify it).

Given that the project has a very tight budget, I would like to use an
existing 3D engine such as Unity3D or Unreal as the base of both the editor
and the player. If not possible, though, I'm OK to develop an editor and
player from scratch, most probably in C# or C++, then.

Any help/tips appreciated... Is there an existing OpenAL implementation on
Windows, working with Unity (preferably) or Unreal? Or otherwise, a good
quality windows implementation coming with an SDK or some example code to
help me start developing my own editor/player in C++ or C# ?

I've spoken with Blue Ripple Sound (Rapture3D implementation vendor)
already, they are most willing to assist me but for a development case like
mine they depend on Creative's OpenAL SDK, that they are not allowed to
redistribute - And Creative has closed down the OpenAL.org website, it
seems - which you certainly all know very well already... :)

Most important aspect for us is the precision of the 3D spatialization of
the sound sources. Audio quality comes second, as long as the user is able
to precisely perceive where the sound is coming from around him/her...

Im am looking forward to (3D-)hearing from you!

Kind regards,

Xavier
-- 

tiny*big*story sprl

Avenue de la Paix 44
B-1420 Braine-l'Alleud
Belgique
+32 472 98 56 97
xavier at tinybigstory.be
skype: xavier.wielemans

TVA BE 0501.800.004
ING 363-1136573-64


>* watch Showreel 2013
<http://vimeo.com/tinybigstory/tinybigstoryshowreel2013>*
[image: vimeo.com/tinybigstory/tinybigstoryshowreel2013]<http://vimeo.com/tinybigstory/tinybigstoryshowreel2013>



-- 

tiny*big*story sprl

Avenue de la Paix 44
B-1420 Braine-l'Alleud
Belgique
+32 472 98 56 97
xavier at tinybigstory.be
skype: xavier.wielemans

TVA BE 0501.800.004
ING 363-1136573-64


>* watch Showreel 2013
<http://vimeo.com/tinybigstory/tinybigstoryshowreel2013>*
[image: vimeo.com/tinybigstory/tinybigstoryshowreel2013]<http://vimeo.com/tinybigstory/tinybigstoryshowreel2013>
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