A virtual reality method for assessing human responses to soundscapes

Virtual realities and simulations are becoming increasingly popular due to constant technological advancement offering more and more realistic scenarios. However, cases of VR being used to assess soundscape-related aspects of perception still appear to be rare. Here, a method for conducting auditory perception experiments in a virtual urban environment is presented and discussed. Participants are exposed to virtual scenarios simulating an urban green area with nearby traffic noise sources, whose visualization draws on physically-based visual renderings. The acoustic scenario is auralized in real-time using geometrical acoustic approaches including simulated and recorded sounds. The virtual environment is presented via head-mounted display and headphones. In this setting, evaluation and behavioural experiments are conducted, with the environment’s acoustic and visual characteristics being experimentally manipulable or controllable. The presented method allows for perception experiments with a high degree of ecological validity while maintaining a controlled laboratory setting. As a practical application, the method is used to determine the impact of road traffic configurations on the restoration quality in an urban green area. Proceeding from the applied method, general opportunities and limitations of experiments performed in virtual urban environments to study noise effects in urban soundscapes are discussed.