PHYSICALLY BASED, GPU ACCELERATED AURALIZATION OF 3D VOLUMES USING FREE SPACE DIFFRACTIONS

Auralization, analogous to visualization, is the generation of sound fields (virtual or physical) through the use of simulation. Multiple methods of auralization have been explored, with acoustic simulation and simulation of acoustic propagation being primary contenders. These simulations place emphasis on physical accuracy, simulating real world effects such as wave diffraction and reverberation, which can often cause them to run at sub-interactive rates. Performant simulations are also given great emphasis, as usability increases with a decrease in per frame run-time, but physical accuracy is often sacrificed to achieve higher performance. Meanwhile, similar problem statements are being addressed in the realm of light transport, with recent advancements increasing physical accuracy in real time simulations. An exploration of such advancements is done to evaluate their ability to tackle the same problem statements in acoustic simulation. Evaluating the different advances in wave propagation, finally a free space BSDF formulation is defined to conduct diffractions of sound waves using a ray tracing approach. Finally, a proposed GPU accelerated application is outlined to generate and visualize the auralization of a sound field in a room. The use of GPU acceleration results in a speedup of more than 500, and significantly improves performance while recreating important wave propagation features.