Audio for VR has been close to the Digital Mixes heart for sometime. In about 1995, the precursor to Digital Mixes my company called Flabberghasted was working with Microsoft and Apple. We were helping to develop extensions and utilisation of QTVR and Surround video. Visually we were pioneers in the use of the first digital cameras and live stitching. Working at concerts of Tori Amos and Tears for Fears we stitched photographs in a backroom on the fly. This was not easy then, no automation everything done by hand. We had become experts of being on the bleeding edge of technology!
At the time audio took second place to the visuals as it does now but we had ways of localising/attaching the audio , especially in Microsoft surround video, to a element in the images. So turn move round the image and the audio moved with you. Twenty five years later with video based VR this is still not in mainstream use but finally it is on it’s way with systems such as Rondo 360. Right now Digital Mixes is waiting for the PC version of the software in order to try it our however! Over the next couple of weeks we will be testing out a number of systems and reporting back on what we think. These are interesting times.
What microphones are we going to use in our audio for VR?
To capture audio for VR we are interested in Ambisonic and Binaural microphones. Many years ago I was lucky to meet with Michael Gerzon the inventor of the Soundfield microphone at an SAE convention where I was talking on the use of audio in games. This was a meeting which set me off on the path of using Ambisonic systems and I look forward to sharing it’s implementation in VR audio systems.
At Digital Mixes audio we are working on audio for VR projects and look forward to uploading samples in the near future.