Minimal Ecological Sound Design for a Sense of Presence in Digital Virtual Environments

Virtual reality is one of the ways that designers and game programmers are seeking to change the way user's experience digital technology. This paper detailed a minimal approach for providing an effective sense of presence in digital virtual environments. Instead of reproducing realistic sounds, we are finding minimal sound objects and sound events. The user studies of people’s imagination of sound identified expectation and discrimination as two important constructs to be considered in designing minimal yet effective ecological sound. Our ongoing research into investigating these constructs is described, along with future avenues for research.