Rendering Models for Immersive Voice Communications within Distributed Virtual Environment

This paper compares three possible rendering models for the provision of immersive voice communications (IVCs) in distributed virtual environments (DVEs) such as multiplayer online games. The common aim of these three rendering models is to create a personalised auditory scene for each listening avatar, consisting of a mix of the surrounding avatars´ voices, positioned according to their positions in the virtual world. The first two rendering models are based on amplitude panning localisation and HRTF-based binaural localisation respectively. The computation cost of the latter is deemed too large to meet the identified processing power constraints. A computation reuse scheme was introduced in the third rendering model which, as shown in our simulation results, reduces significantly the computational cost of providing IVC using HRTF-based binaural localisation.