ABSTRACT
Many factors must be considered in designing spatial acoustic displays, including the technology used to generate the sensory cues as well as the perceptual factors that affect how much information is received by the listener. After discussing auditory displays in general, this chapter reviews the psychophysical cues that affect auditory spatial processing, including how acoustic cues can be influenced by spatial cues from other modalities. Methods for simulating acoustic spatial cues are then discussed, followed by a more detailed examination of factors affecting the design of a virtual environment (which includes the dynamic simulation of acoustic spatial cues). Finally, some experimental results are presented that address how human performance on auditory spatial tasks may be limited by perceptual factors as well as by the chosen method of display.
