Computer Algorithm To Synthesize Fire Sound For Virtual Reality

Whenever you are about to buy a television, the most popular demand is to have the one which can have the most realistic sound effects so that you can enjoy sound along with the superior picture quality. The sounds produced in the 21st century usually depend on the recorded sound during shooting of the video. However if you are playing some computer 3D games or in simple words you are involved in an activity on your PC which makes use of virtual reality, it would be hard to produce exact sound since no body know what would be the next action.

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Rapid movement of heated gases generates high-frequency sounds that are an important part of the sound of fire, but computer-generated images don't simulate those details. Cornell researchers synthesize low-frequency sounds to match the graphics, then map in the highs based on the sounds of real fire. Image Credit: Doug James

To solve this difficulty to certain extent, associate Prof. Doug James of #-Link-Snipped-# claims to have developed an algorithm which can analyze the sounds "On the fly" which are based on the models of simulated physics. The team headed by James will present their work in the ongoing ACM SIGGRAPH computer graphics conference in Vancouver, Canada from August 7-11. The team has earlier analyzed some basic sounds like splashing of liquid collision of hard/rigid bodies and breaking of glass.

In the project supported by National Science Foundation, The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and Intel, James explained that whenever we have two objects in contact, due to surface irregularities we cannot have a single interface between the two contacting bodies. There are numerous physical contacts between the objects. The theme is to select most important points which will help us in analyzing sound in the event of a collision. It would be very difficult to integrate all the points in this process and hard to compute. Speaking of the rigid bodies, he said that there is nothing like rigid bodies. At the most the bodies can be hard, even they also vibrate on collision. Doug James and his team have been working on developing the sound on the basis of these vibrations.

The conventional way in which a computer analyzes the sound is by taking into account all the forces acting on the colliding objects and then recreating an imaginary model of the situations as if the objects were real. Other than solid bodies, James has also developed a computer algorithm to analyze the sound produced by burning something. Unlike Collision, sounds from fire are produced due to the rapid combustion process. Cornell scientists have until now successfully modeled the low frequency sound produced during burning however it is still a difficult task to combine minute details. The research currently depends on economical approach of models being based on real fire sounds to develop their algorithm.

Of the few and significant sounds James and his team has analyzed are fire breathing dragon statue (as seen in the image above) a burning stick, a torch swinging in air, burning stick and others. The research still lacks the whoosh sound in a real fire however things might get into real time applications some time in near future.

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