Sounds of silence - how to animate virtual worlds with sound

Sounds are an integral and sometimes annoying part of our daily life. Virtual worlds which imitate natural environments gain a lot of authenticity from fast, high quality visualization combined with sound effects. Sounds help to increase the degree of immersion for human dwellers in imaginery worlds significantly. The virtual reality toolkit of IGD features a broad range of standard visual and advanced realtime audio components which interprete an object-oriented definition of the scene. The virtual reality system "Virtual Design" realized with the toolkit enables the designer of virtual worlds to create a true audiovisual environment. Several examples on video demonstrate the usage of the audio features in Virtual Design.