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FUtUrE DIrEctIONs AND
cONcLUsION
that contain moving sound sources, the technique
is effective enough to model sound propagation
with several orders of reflection.
In 2008, Menzies, in his paper Virtual Inti-
macy: Phya as an Instrument (Menzies, 2008),
considered how Phya might be used to create
music. He describes how Phya's physical be-
haviour is naturally appealing to humans and
how the facility to create physically impractical
or even impossible conditions in a virtual world
gives users more freedom than in the real world,
creating new musical composition possibilities.
In 2009, Menzies revealed the beginnings of a
complementary application for Phya, in the paper
Phya and VFoley, Physically Motivated Audio
for Virtual Environments (Menzies, 2009). The
development of VFoley is intended to allow users
to hear how an object sounds as modifications are
being made to it, so that a user may quickly test
object interactions (Figure 3.). An application
developed by myself (Mullan, 2009) to synthesise
sounds for regular shapes, not only allows the
user to modify an object's geometric and mate-
rial parameters, but also parameters that directly
describe how an object sounds, referred to as its
“audibly perceptible” parameters. The completion
of projects such as these brings physical model-
ling for sound synthesis to non-programmers, and
hence more widespread usage.
So, what lies in the future of this research area?
What are the current barriers to its mainstream
adoption? Is physical modelling for sound syn-
thesis set to become the norm for computer game
sound effects? Let us first look at possible future
research directions.
Menzies' most recent work promises to provide
users with an authoring environment for Phya,
hence making it accessible to a wider audience.
Although it is not yet clear what form this will take,
the facility for users to modify an object's size,
shape, and material properties while it is sounded
in real-time, would most certainly be desirable.
The most problematic stipulation here is the provi-
sion of a means to change an object's shape while
providing sound in real-time. To date, any work
that allows for the sounding of arbitrarily shaped
objects has required an off-line pre-processing
stage to determine the object's modal data and,
so far, this cannot happen quickly enough to be
used in an application that could be described
as interactive. Cynthia Bruyns has carried out
related research and has shown how to quickly
estimate an arbitrarily shaped object's modal data
based on those of a similar shape (Bruyns, 2006).
However, no application exists whereby a level
designer may create a unique object and instantly
(or within a reasonably short time) hear how it
sounds. This would be desirable from a game
development point of view and would create new
gameplay possibilities.
Figure 3. Screenshot taken from the development of VFoley. (© 2010 Dylan Menzies. Used with permission.)
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