research design laboratory

Square Root

We are currently documenting the relationship between an in progress mobile audio recording device that allows for users to map sound using GSP components, and its 3D counterpart. Both projects share the same database of soundscapes, generated by the audio mobile application and remixed in a virtual desktop application.

Yesterday we were putting the final touches on some of the underpinning design strategies for the 3D environment, built by Daniel Hambelton in the game engine, Unity. A few things we learned from Dan about design include open street mapping ("crowdsourced"), loading bar theory, audio data (bit) rates ("44 KHertz = 44 00 bits coming in as a stream"), trade offs (behind the scene loads vs what you see on the interface), the role of tags in sorting collections, the limits of geographical tile pulling ("2000 square meters is pretty much the limit without over burdening the game"), the difficulties of implementing heat maps, node strength calculations, CPU load, reliance on pixel grids ("10 000 nodes starts to be pretty heavy"), the issue of distance, server side developments, reflections in buildings, connections between samples, scripts, updates, repetition, GUIs, work benches and liquid metal sci-fi models.

One of our best work meetings, I'd say.

 

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