Virtual reality environments for soundscape research

Soundscape research demands a holistic approach for the analysis of environments, yet any research method, e.g. soundwalk or lab-based listening test, has its advantages and limitations. The virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technology provides an alternative method for soundscape research, which may retain as much context as possible while enabling control conditions. The current phase of this research project focuses on the ecological validity of virtual reality environment for soundscape, by creating virtual environments for comparison of human experiences and responses in a real soundscape and three-dimensional virtual ones. The workflow of scene rendering on different levels of detail is described. The results are made publicly available.