Spatialization is good at representing some things and conveying a sense of direction and distance. The farther away something is, the quieter it should sound. As you move toward it, or it moves toward you, the sound should grow progressively louder. But when something’s close to your head, all of this changes dramatically.
With the launch of Touch controls, there’s a lot of action taking place really close to you. That makes it all the more important to get the sound just right—otherwise, you risk breaking the sense of immersion and pulling people out of the experience. While Rift’s existing audio filters provided good directionality, they were designed to place sounds at least one meter away from the listener’s position in space.
With our recently introduced Near-Field HRTF, developers can model sounds much closer than one meter away with a greater degree of accuracy. Now, if you’re holding an object that makes sound (like a ringing telephone) and bring it closer to your head, we’re able to replicate that experience in VR in a believable way. …...more
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