[x3d-public] Sound component: Sound effects processing summary, Collision proxy for computational reduction

[Don Brutzman]

Here is my first attempt at summarizing sound effects processing.  Checked in.  Questions and further improvements welcome.

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16.2.4 Sound effects processing

Sound streams can be manipulated by a variety of sound effects. Audio graphs are a powerful mechanism for modeling the diversity of real-world and electronic modifications to sound that can occur. Close integration of rendering and effects with 3D models and aggregate scenes provides powerful capabilities for increased realism.

Historically a wide variety of computational libraries for sound generation and propagation have been available, often with significant differences and limitations. Sound propagation and effects processing in this component are based on design patterns found in W3C Web Audio API [W3C-WebAudio]. Design goals of that specification include supporting "the capabilities found in modern game audio engines as well as some of the mixing, processing, and filtering tasks that are found in modern desktop audio production applications." These capabilities are broad, implemented in a variety of libraries, and deployed in multiple Web browsers. The primary interfaces of W3C Web Audio API [W3C-WebAudio] necessary for creating audio graphs have corresponding node support in this component.

[Editor's note] TODO continued design, implementation and evaluation work is needed to ensure that full coverage of capabilities is achieved.

Descriptions follow for a number of fields are common to multiple nodes related to sound processing.
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Important addition:

16.2.3 Sound propagation
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If a simplified geometry alternative from Collision proxy field is available, it is used preferentially by collision-detection algorithms for sound propagation, rather than descendant children of the Collision node. Such geometric simplifications can often reduce computational costs significantly without reduction in perceived audio fidelity of 3D scene acoustics.
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all the best, Don
-- 
Don Brutzman  Naval Postgraduate School, Code USW/Br       brutzman at nps.edu
Watkins 270,  MOVES Institute, Monterey CA 93943-5000 USA   +1.831.656.2149
X3D graphics, virtual worlds, navy robotics http://faculty.nps.edu/brutzman