Immersive Virtual Reality and Environmental Noise Assessment: an innovative audio-visual approach (original) (raw)
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The paper presents the preliminary stage of a research about the effect of a multisensory perception on the perceived annoyance and pleasantness of railways noise barriers. The aim of this study is to investigate if a different design of the barrier can influence the noise perception of the population by making the sound source (train pass-by) visible or not, while the same audio signals are held. At the same time, visual and "aesthetic" aspects are investigated. Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) technologies and a "paired comparison" structure were used to prepare the test. As the audio signals were held constant during the experiments, it seemed likely to ascribe the noticed differences of the assessment to the visual stimulus.
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Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) is a simulated technology used to deliver multisensory information to people under different environmental conditions. When IVR is generally applied in urban planning and soundscape research, it reveals attractive possibilities for the assessment of urban sound environments with higher immersion for human participation. In virtual sound environments, various topics and measures are designed to collect subjective responses from participants under simulated laboratory conditions. Soundscape or noise assessment studies during virtual experiences adopt an evaluation approach similar to in situ methods. This paper aims to review the approaches that are utilized to assess the ecological validity of IVR for the perception of urban sound environments and the necessary technologies during audio–visual reproduction to establish a dynamic IVR experience that ensures ecological validity. The review shows that, through the use of laboratory tests including subject...
New tools for the noise annoyance assessment of projects
According to national and international legislation, the projects of new industries and new transport infrastructures (airports, railways, roads) should be examined in terms of expected noise impact on the population and on the natural environment. The general approach contemplates the elaboration of noise maps with simulation software and the comparison with noise limits. On the other side several studies have, so far, studied the correlation between audio and visual stimuli on the overall assessment of noise annoyance. The integration of the new auralization and visualization techniques to describe the built environment through a multi-sensorial approach can lead to more information on the noise annoyance. In this paper is presented a tool for the auralization of environmental noise sources and a methodology based on immersive virtual reality for the assessment of noise impact of new projects.
The aim of this study was to assess the impact of a wind farm on individuals by means of an audio-visual methodology that tried to simulate biologically plausible individual–environment interactions. To disentangle the effects of auditory and visual components on cognitive performances and subjective evaluations, unimodal (Audio or Video) and bimodal (Audio + Video) approaches were compared. Participants were assigned to three experimental conditions that reproduced a wind farm by means of an immersive virtual reality system: bimodal condition, reproducing scenarios with both acoustic and visual stimuli; unimodal visual condition, with only visual stimuli; unimodal auditory condition, with only auditory stimuli. While immersed in the virtual scenarios, participants performed tasks assessing verbal fluency, short-term verbal memory, backward counting, and distance estimations (egocentric: how far is the turbine from you?; allocentric: how far is the turbine from the target?). Afterwards, participants reported their degree of visual and noise annoyance. The results revealed that the presence of a visual scenario as compared to the only availability of auditory stimuli may exert a negative effect on resource-demanding cognitive tasks but a positive effect on perceived noise annoyance. This supports the idea that humans perceive the environment holistically and that auditory and visual features are processed in close interaction.
Landscape and Urban Planning, 2019
Noise annoyance reactions in the population due to wind farms are related to visual as well as noise-related impacts of the farms. Improved understanding of these effects may support the planning of better accepted wind farms. Recently, tools for visualization and auralization of wind farms have been developed that allow mutually studying audiovisual effects on annoyance. The objective of this study was to investigate the audiovisual effects of different wind turbine noise situations on short-term noise annoyance in a psychophysical laboratory experiment, considering serial position effects (simple order and differential carryover effects). A set of 24 audiovisual situations covering a range of acoustical characteristics (sound pressure level, periodic amplitude modulation) and visual settings (landscape with visible wind turbine, landscape only, grey background) was created. The factorial design of the experiment allowed separating audiovisual effects from serial position effects on noise annoyance. Both visual and acoustical characteristics were found to affect noise annoyance, besides the participants' attitude towards wind farms. Sound pressure level and amplitude modulation increased annoyance, the presence of a visualized landscape decreased annoyance, and the visibility of a wind turbine increased annoyance. While simple order effects could be eliminated by counterbalancing, the initial visual setting strongly affected the annoyance ratings of the subsequent settings. Due to this differential carryover effect, visual effects could be assessed reliably only as long as the participants saw the initial visual setting. Therefore, the presentation order of audiovisual stimuli should be carefully considered in experimental studies and in participatory landscape planning.
Traffic noise: Annoyance assessment of real and virtual sounds based on close proximity measurements
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The negative impact of noise on human health is well established and a high percentage of environmental noise is related with traffic sources. In this study, we compared annoyance judgments of real and virtual traffic sounds. Virtual sounds were generated through an auralization software with input from close proximity tyre/road noise measurements and real sounds were recorded through a Head and Torso Simulator. Both groups had sounds generated at two speeds and from three urban pavement surfaces (asphalt concrete, concrete blocks and granite cubes). Under controlled laboratory conditions, participants rated the annoyance of each real and virtual stimulus. It was found that virtual stimuli, based on close proximity tyre/road noise, can be used to assess traffic annoyance, in spite of systematic lower rates than those found for real stimuli. The effects of type of pavement and speed were the same for both conditions (real and virtualized stimulus). Opposed to granite cubes, asphalt concrete had lower annoyance rates for both test speeds and higher rate differences between real and virtual stimuli. Additionally, it was also found that annoyance is better described by Loudness than by LAmax. This evidence is stronger for the virtual stimuli condition than for the real stimuli one. Nevertheless, we should stress that it is possible to accurately predict real annoyance rates from virtual auralized sound samples through a simple transformation model. The methodology developed is clearly efficient and significantly simplifies field procedures, allowing the reduction of experimental costs, a better control of variables and an increment on the accuracy of annoyance ratings.
Next generation soundscape design using virtual reality technologies
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2016
The quality of life including good sound quality has been sought by community members as part of the smart city initiative. While many governments have placed special attention to waste management, air and water pollution, acoustic environment in cities has been directed toward the control of noise, in particular, transportation noise. Governments that care about the tranquility in cities rely primarily on setting the socalled acceptable noise levels i.e. just quantities for compliance and improvement. Sound quality is always ignored. Recently, the ISO released a series of standards on soundscape. However, sound quality is a subjective matter and depends heavily on the perception of humans in different contexts. The study of soundscape and sound quality is not easy. According to the ISO soundscape guideline, people can use sound walks, questionnaire surveys, and even lab tests to determine sound quality during a soundscape design process. With the advance of virtual reality technologies, we believe that the current technology enables us to create an application that immerses designers and stakeholders in the community to perceive and compare changes in sound quality and to provide feedback on different soundscape designs. An app has been developed specifically for this purpose.
Citeseer
The characteristics of moving sound sources have strong implications on the listener's distance perception and the estimation of velocity. Modifications of the typical sound emissions as they are currently occurring due to the tendency towards electromobility have an impact on the pedestrian's safety in road traffic. Thus, investigations of the relevant cues for velocity and distance perception of moving sound sources are not only of interest for the psychoacoustic community, but also for several applications, like e.g. virtual reality, noise pollution and safety aspects of road traffic. This article describes a series of psychoacoustic experiments in this field. Dichotic and diotic stimuli of a set of real-life recordings taken from a passing passenger car and a motorcycle were presented to test subjects who in turn were asked to determine the velocity of the object and its minimal distance from the listener. The results of these psychoacoustic experiments show Digital Peer Publishing Licence Any party may pass on this Work by electronic means and make it available for download under the terms and conditions of the current version of the Digital Peer Publishing Licence (DPPL). The text of the licence may be accessed and retrieved via Internet at http://www.dipp.nrw.de/. that the estimated velocity is strongly linked to the object's distance. Furthermore, it could be shown that binaural cues contribute significantly to the perception of velocity. In a further experiment, it was shown that-independently of the type of the vehicle-the main parameter for distance determination is the maximum sound pressure level at the listener's position. The article suggests a system architecture for the adequate consideration of moving sound sources in virtual auditory environments. Virtual environments can thus be used to investigate the influence of new vehicle powertrain concepts and the related sound emissions of these vehicles on the pedestrians' ability to estimate the distance and velocity of moving objects.
Frontiers in Virtual Reality, 2021
Irrelevant ambient noise can have profound effects on human performance and wellbeing. Acoustic interventions (e.g., installation of sound absorbing materials) that reduce intelligible noise (i.e., sound unrelated to the relevant speech, including noise from other talkers within the space) by reducing room reverberation, have been found to be an effective means to alleviate the negative effects of noise on cognitive performance. However, these interventions are expensive, and it is difficult to evaluate their impact in the field. Virtual reality (VR) provides a promising simulation platform to evaluate the likely impact of varied acoustic interventions before they are chosen and installed. This study employed a virtual classroom environment to evaluate whether an intervention to reduce reverberation can be simulated successfully in VR and mitigate the effects of ambient noise on cognitive performance, physiological stress, and mood. The repeated-measures experimental design consiste...