Interaction between auditory and visual distance cues in virtual reality applications

Virtual reality applications rely on the accurate localization of virtual objects. The position of these objects is defined by three coordinates: azimuth, elevation and distance. Even though several studies investigated the perception of auditory and visual cues in azimuth and elevation, little has been made on the distance dimension. It has been shown that listeners under-estimate egocentric distance in virtual environments. This study aims at investigating the way humans perceive visual and auditory distance cues of virtual objects. For egocentric distances from 2 to 20 m, subjects were asked to estimate the object distance in three contexts: auditory modality alone, visual one alone, combination of both modalities. Even though egocentric distance is under-estimated in the three contexts, the results suggest a higher influence of visual information than auditory information on the perceived distance.