Game Sonar
An Accessibility Tool for Exploring Virtual Enivronments for Visually Impaired Players
Game Sonar works as a combination of functionalities to ease the orientation process. The sonar part of the system emits a sound in 3D space, that is modulated with a delay and in loudness depending on the distance to player. It is realised through ray-casting and has an upper limit of 5 sound sources being triggered based on the limits of human perception. Furthermore there is a camera reset and compass navigational system to ensure navigational capabilities on a larger scale. For more details on the implementation, study and results, you can find the thesis here.
Game Sonar is an accessibility tool primarily targeted towards visually impaired players and aims to enable them to explore 3D environments on their own terms.
The tool was created as part of a thesis project for RWTH Aachen, supervised by Simon Völker. As part of the thesis a small scale player study was conducted to make estimations about the potential application in larger scale games.
The prototype was created in Unity using the Steam Audio Framework to ensure realistic spatial audio and effects like e.g. reflections and occlusion.
