ASA 127th Meeting M.I.T. 1994 June 6-10

4pPP25. Using physically based models for collision-sound synthesis in virtual environments.

Res. Lab. of Electron., MIT, 36-765, 77 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02139

Aural attributes of virtual environments have recently received great attention. While much of this work has been focused on spatialization of sound signals, the focus herein is on the synthesis of relevant environmental sounds. In particular, a framework is proposed for the synthesis of collision sounds using physically based models and digital filters. An impulse is fed into a bandpass filter, which is affected by the impact force as the driving source to the filter bank. Each filter bank represents a dominant vibrational mode that contributes to the collision sound. It will be shown how to determine the dominant vibrational modes and their corresponding natural resonant frequencies based on the material density, the Young's modulus, inertia, and the boundary conditions of the objects involved. A broad range of collision sounds are synthesized to illustrate the use of the physically based models.