Spatialized audio streaming for networked virtual environments

ABSTRACT

Networked virtual environments (NVE) are increasingly popular and represent a range of applications. Some online virtual worlds have a dedicated purpose, such as Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG), while others implement more of foundational frameworks which are not necessarily applications per se, but form platforms to create applications. One of the premier examples of the latter is Second Life from Linden Lab. While such networked virtual environments show great potential for interesting and novel applications, many technical challenges remain. A significant shortcoming in current systems concerns the communication between virtual world participants. Early designs only supported text chat, while more recently voice chat has been introduced. However, often the voice communication paradigm still mimics traditional audio group conferencing without adaptation to the three-dimensional metaverse paradigm. In this study we present our design of an interactive audio streaming protocol that aims to enable the creation of an aural soundscape around the user that matches the visual experience. To make our design practical, scalable and to avoid further burdening the virtual world servers, our protocol is based on a peer-to-peer distribution topology. Simulation results are presented that show the feasibility and utility of our design.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.4 INFORMATION SYSTEMS APPLICATIONS
      H.4.3 Communications Applications
          Subjects: Computer conferencing, teleconferencing, and videoconferencing

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.1 Multimedia Information Systems
          Subjects: Audio input/output

General Terms:
Algorithms, Measurement, Performance

Keywords:
peer-to-peer streaming, proximity audio, spatial audio