The Open Virtual Reality Journal

2009, 1 : 8-17
Published online 2009 September 3 . DOI: 10.2174/1875323X01002010008
Publisher ID: TOVRJ-1-8

RESEARCH ARTICLE
 A Review of Spatial Sound for Virtual Environments and Games with Graphics Processing Units

Foad Hamid 1 and Bill Kapralos, *,2
1 Department of Computer Science and Engineering, York University, 4700 Keele Street North, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M3J 1P3;
2 Faculty of Business and Information Technology, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, 2000 Simcoe Street North, Oshawa, Ontario, Canada, L1H 7K4

* Address correspondence to this author at the Faculty of Business and Information Technology, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, 2000 Simcoe Street North, Oshawa, Ontario, Canada, L1H 7K4; Email: bill.kapralos@uoit.ca

ABSTRACT

The generation of spatial audio and audio processing in general using traditional software-based methods and techniques is computationally prohibitive thereby limiting the number of, and type of auditory effects that can be incorporated into applications. In contrast to consumer-grade audio cards, the graphics processing units (GPUs) of video cards have moved away from the traditional fixed-function 3D graphics pipeline towards a flexible general-purpose computational engine that can currently implement many parallel algorithms directly using the graphics hardware resulting in tremen¬dous computational speed-ups. Various spatial audio applications are well suited for GPU-based processing providing developers of virtual environments and games with the possibility of incorporating real-time, spatial audio into their simulations. This paper presents an overview of the research efforts that have utilized the GPU for the implementation of spatial sound for virtual environments and games. Approaches to GPU-based spatial sound are summarized and their advantages and disadvantages are presented

Keywords:

Graphics processing unit (GPU), spatial sound, real-time, virtual reality, virtual environment, video games.