[x3d-public] X3Dv4 Audio and Sound improvements: progress report

Fri Oct 25 01:53:36 PDT 2019

Am happy to report that Efi Lakka, Thanos Malamos and I had an excellent teleconference today regarding X3D audio.

They shared a tremendous set of presentations that show a mapping between X3D sound model and W3D audio model, adding physics-based audio properties to X3D.  It looked like, with a little work, we will be able to directly define an advanced sound model for X3Dv4 that compatibly extends the existing VRML-era spatial sound model.  This was really encouraging and showed deep scrutiny.

They expect to be able to share this work soon.   We have planned on an X3D Teleconference review meeting using Web3D Zoom

	X3D Audio and Sound: special session of X3D Working Group
	Web3D zoom
	Thursday 21 NOV 2019, 0900-1000 Pacific, 1900-2000 Athens

Given the apparent implementability of these capabilities, Audio and Sound are now listed for tracking as part of expected X3Dv4 progress.  Updates from group review will be reflected in the status table there.

	X3Dv4 Implementations Status
	https://www.web3d.org/x3dv4-implementations

Email review by the community and X3D Working Group will update our design document and provide a plan of action milestones (POAM) for Mantis issue tracking over the next few weeks.

[1]	Strategies to Improve X3D v4 Sound Component for 3D sound model and audio rendering
	http://www.web3d.org/specifications/X3Dv4StrategiesToImproveSoundComponent.docx
	http://www.web3d.org/specifications/X3Dv4StrategiesToImproveSoundComponent.pdf

Efi and Professor Malamos have published before in Web3D Conference.  Online search shows they have a few more references of interest in International Journal of Interactive Multimedia and Artificial Intelligence (IJMAI) that we should also add to [1]:

[2]	Eftychia Lakka, Athanasios G. Malamos, Konstantinos G. Pavlakis, J. Andrew Ware:
	Spatial Sound Rendering - A Survey. IJIMAI 5(3): 33-45 (2018)
	https://www.ijimai.org/journal/node/2396

[3]	Andreas Stamoulias, Eftychia Lakka, Athanasios G. Malamos:
	"Wrapping" X3DOM around Web Audio API. IJIMAI 3(5): 36-46 (2015)
	https://www.ijimai.org/journal/node/859

Of further note is that the W3C Audio Working Group has continued to make steady progress for several years now.  Specifications (which include test suites) and milestones of interest:

========================================================================

[4] W3C Audio Working Group
     https://www.w3.org/2011/audio/

[5] Web Audio API
	W3C Candidate Recommendation, 18 September 2018
	https://www.w3.org/TR/webaudio

[6] Web MIDI API
	W3C Working Draft 17 March 2015
	https://www.w3.org/TR/webmidi

[7] Web Audio Processing: Use Cases and Requirements
	W3C Working Group Note 29 January 2013
	https://www.w3.org/TR/webaudio-usecases

[8] https://www.w3.org/2011/audio/wiki/W3C_Audio_Publications_and_Milestones

Specification		FPWD		CR		PR		Rec
* Web Audio API 1.0	Dec 2011	Q4 2016		Q3 2017		Q4 2017
* Web Audio API 2.0	Q2 2017 	Q4 2018 	2020 		2020
* Web MIDI API	 	Q3 2012 	Q4 2017 	Q2 2018 	Q2 2019

========================================================================

TODO.  Clearly we need 2 or 3 Web3D Consortium members to begin monitoring and participating in the W3C Audio Working Group.  Please advise if you are interested.

Exciting progress!  Thank you Efi and Thanos for your work, looking forward to your shared presentation and further scrutiny/specification/implementation/evaluation.

Anyone listening out there??  Have fun with X3D!  8)

On 1/10/2019 10:17 AM, Brutzman, Donald (Don) (CIV) wrote:
> Athanasios reported that his team is working on advanced audio techniques.
> 
> We currently have the following audio and sound goals listed for X3Dv4:
> 
> 	X3D v4.0 Development: Candidate Capabilities
> 	http://www.web3d.org/wiki/index.php/X3D_version_4.0_Development#Candidate_Capabilities
> 
> * Audio and video: alignment with W3C Audio Working Group, especially for Web Audio API and Web Midi API.
> 
> 	https://www.w3.org/2011/audio
> 	https://webaudio.github.io/web-audio-api
> 	https://webaudio.github.io/web-midi-api
> 
> ** Considerations. Adding royalty-free formats, streamability, disabling attenuation, 3D aural spatialization using reflection from simple geometry (such as RESOUND).
> 
> 	[X3D-Public] improved validation tests for sound nodes; add ability avoiding audio attenuation altogether
> 	http://web3d.org/pipermail/x3d-public_web3d.org/2013-December/002681.html
> 
> 	http://gamma.cs.unc.edu/Sound/RESound
> 
> **  Point paper. Strategies to Improve X3D v4 Sound Component for 3D sound model and audio rendering
> 
> 	http://www.web3d.org/specifications/X3Dv4StrategiesToImproveSoundComponent.pdf
> 
> Additional considerations and references are welcome.  Are we on the right track?

... it surely appears so.

Also thanks for this response early in the year Nicholas, the reference was immediately included in our design document.

On 1/10/2019 12:57 PM, Nicholas Polys wrote:
> See also:
> 
> Micah Taylor and Francis Meng. 2018. Web-based geometric acoustic simulator. In Proceedings of the 23rd International ACM Conference on 3D Web Technology (Web3D '18). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Article 6, 5 pages. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3208806.3208817

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