Ubiquitous Ambient Gaming - First evaluation of sound orientation and differentiation front/back
From EQUIS Lab Wiki
April 26-27th, 2010
A first test was done on the spatial orientation thanks to the ambient audio. I also compared 2 ways of differentiating the back and front sounds. The users were asked to catch 2 animals among 4 without looking at the screen. They were asked to talk out loud so that I could collect information on their perception of the sounds.
The users played twice, each time with a different way of differentiating the front and back sounds. They didn’t know what difference there was between the two tests.
Parameters
- Four animals (2 cats and 2 dogs) are moving in an area of 400m x 400m.
- The player is placed in the middle of the area.
- The player can move thanks to the 4 arrows :
- left / right : the user stands still but turn around himself, one degree at a time
- up / down : the user moves forward / backward of 1m following his bearing
- Two ways of differentiate the back and the front were tested in a different order :
- the sound stops when the animal passes a certain angle behind the bearing of the user : 120 < teta < 240
- the sound fades progressively (linearly) when the angle between the animal and the player’s bearing gets close to 180 degrees : 110 < teta < 180 and 250 > teta > 180
- The animals don’t make a sound all the time, there are delays between their sound. The delay varies among the animals but it is constant for one animal. For the test, the maximum delay is 2s.
Contents |
User 1
The user played twice, each time with a different way of differentiating the front and back sounds. He started with the abrupt stop of the sound, and then re-played with the sound progressively fading.
Sound stops right away
- The user didn’t understand what happened, one minute the animal was here, the second the animal disappeared. The disappearance did not connect right away with the fact that the animal was behind.
- The user used more the variation of volume than the orientation of the sound.
Sound fades progressively
- Used a lot more the orientation, concentrated on it.
- He never felt that the animal was in front, it always seemed behind.
General remarks
- For the first test, the user concentrated on the volume differences to orientate himself, but on the second test he focused more on the position of the sound. He found his orientation to be more fun when he used the position of the sound than when he used the variation of volume.
- The user felt little differences between the 2 tests. The orientation felt the same, but the progressive fading of sound felt more pleasant, more natural than a brutal stop of the sound.
- The user felt the differences between left/right and between high volume / low volume, but he didn’t feel the difference between close / far. He understood the volume represented the distance to the object, but he didn’t feel it was a natural way (it felt like an artificial connection).
- As for the difference between front / back, the user felt it was a good way to do it but it was not enough, it didn’t seem natural enough.
=> It seemed to him that the volume variation, used either to indicate the distance or to differentiate the front and the back, is well used but that it is not enough because it is not natural to use. However, he felt that he could learn very quickly to associate the volume to the distance and to the difference front / back. It was also noticeable between the first and the second play : he moved more quickly and more accurately the second time.
He made other remarks concerning the sounds used :
- After two plays, he got annoyed by the repetitive sounds of the animals, he felt it would be more interesting to have different sounds for each animal :
- the sounds would alternate randomly,
- or 2 animals of a same type would not make the exact sound.
- He thought the gaps between each sound an animal makes should vary randomly ( for the test, each animal has a different gap between the sounds, but the gap doesn’t vary for one animal).
User 2
The user played twice, each time with a different way of differentiating the front and back sounds. He started with the sound progressively fading, and then re-played with the abrupt stop of the sound.
Sound fades progressively
- He felt it was hard to tell how close he was from an animal.
- He had problems differentiating the front from the back, once he said he thought the animal was on her back, but it was in front of him.
Sound stops right away
- At first he got confused because sounds disappeared all of a sudden. At one time he thought he had caught an animal because it had stopped barking but he had just passed by it without catching it.
- When he stopped and turned around to localize a dog, he felt a discomfort because the sound would stop sometime and he would not know if it was because he had stopped barking or because he was behind her.
General remarks
- He thought it was going to be much harder to orientate herself just with the sound, he liked the experience.
- He preferred the abrupt stop of the sound when the animal gets in the back compared to the progressive fading because the progressive fading felt as if the animal was going away.
- As for his own orientation, he would have liked to know visually which bearing he was aiming at, even without seeing the animals. He felt it would have helped him.
- He also had difficulties catching a dog because he would stop for too long to bark, he thought it would have been better if the dog didn’t stop barking for so long (the gap between sounds is calculated randomly, but it can reach 2s). However, it seemed to him that a big gap would give a good game-play : it would make the game harder.
User 3
The user played twice, each time with a different way of differentiating the front and back sounds. He started with the abrupt stop of the sound, and then re-played with the sound progressively fading.
Sound stops right away
- He kept hearing the animals in his back when they were in front of him.
- He could not understand why an animal would stop abruptly making noise. He mentioned it would be better with a more continuous fade.
Sound fades progressively
- He kept hearing the animals behind when they were in front of him.
- For both plays, he used a lot of forward / backward to position himself.
General remarks
- About the differentiation front / back :
- He found the fading was better because it was less abrupt, but he precised that the fading could be ambiguous on whether the animal is behind or is going away.
- He felt a difference between both techniques since it was very noticeable when an animal stopped emitting sound abruptly. He would have preferred that their is no difference between front and back, and let the player find out by himself by moving around (he used a lot the forward/backward arrows to try to position the animals).
- He felt that the difference left/right was good and he felt the link between distance and volume.
- He thought it was difficult to concentrate on one animal when another animal of the same type was around, even if they don’t bark at the same time. He would have preferred that each animal has a different sound, or a different pitch, so that he can focus on one and not be distracted by the others.
