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Splash, Splatter, Sploosh, and Bloop!

Acoustic Bubble writes "Researchers at Cornell University have developed the first algorithm for synthesizing familiar bubble-based fluid sounds automatically from 3D fluid simulations, e.g, for future virtual environments. The research (entitled 'Harmonic Fluids') will appear at ACM SIGGRAPH 2009 in New Orleans in August 2009. Check out some videos of falling, pouring, splashing and babbling water simulations (computed on a Linux cluster)."

100 comments

  1. Hmm. by Luke727 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Was I the only one who immediately thought of a cumshot upon reading the title?

    --
    If you find this post offensive, don't read it! THINK ABOUT YOUR BREATHING! I am what I am because of how apes behave.
    1. Re:Hmm. by interkin3tic · · Score: 1

      Sort of, I was thinking of poo. And by sort of, I mean "gross."

    2. Re:Hmm. by youn · · Score: 5, Funny

      I believe it's called the Splash-dot effect

      --
      Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that :p
    3. Re:Hmm. by beadfulthings · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I'm pretty stodgy. All I could think of was the Brownian motion poem:

      Big whorls have little whorls
      Which feed on their velocity.
      And little whorls have lesser whorls,
      And so on to viscosity...

      --
      "Here's what's happening. You're starting to drive like your Dad..." - Red Green
    4. Re:Hmm. by Ethanol-fueled · · Score: 2, Funny

      Aside from the oooohs and aaaahs, good sex sounds like "gluck, gluck, gluck...", like repeatedly slapping a filled-up douchebag against the sidewalk.

    5. Re:Hmm. by KudyardRipling · · Score: 1, Informative

      It could be the sound usually described with the word "PBBBT-BWECK!"used prominently in the 1960's Hanna-Barbera animated cartoons. It could also be the sound effect used in the Tom & Jerry cartoons throughout the 1950's approximated by "THFFFWWRK!" representing an impacting into mud, tar, uncured concrete, manure, etc.

      --
      Submission as evidence constitutes plaintiff and/or prosecutorial misconduct.
    6. Re:Hmm. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      "gluck, gluck, gluck" is the sound you hear when you repeatedly slap a filled-up douchebag against the sidewalk? Seriously?

      How about, "Ouch, ouch, ouch!"

    7. Re:Hmm. by Stile+65 · · Score: 1

      Was I the only one who immediately thought of a cumshot upon reading the title?

      Nope. First thing I thought of was the sound of beer as it's being poured. My mind goes to a totally different gutter. :(

      --
      I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
    8. Re:Hmm. by ModMeFlamebait · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      "gluck, gluck, gluck" is the sound you hear when you repeatedly slap a filled-up douchebag against the sidewalk? Seriously?

      How about, "Ouch, ouch, ouch!"

      You're doing it wrong.

      --
      Pavlov. Does this name ring a bell?
    9. Re:Hmm. by commodoresloat · · Score: 4, Funny

      Stuff that splatters?

    10. Re:Hmm. by Gleng · · Score: 4, Funny

      Stuff that splatters?

      News for turds?

      --
      "Proudly Posting Without Reading The Article"
    11. Re:Hmm. by SeaFox · · Score: 1

      Actually, I thought of Alka-Selter.

      And for the record, I'm still in my 20's.

    12. Re:Hmm. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oops. You mean turbulence, not Brownian Motion. That's a very clear description of Kolmogorov's turbulent cascade. As in Sir Horace Lamb's quote that, "I am an old man now, and when I die and go to Heaven there are two matters on which I hope for enlightenment. One is quantum electrodynamics, and the other is the turbulent motion of fluids. And about the former I am really rather optimistic." (Dang. Quotes seem much less original and poignant when they find their way onto Wikipedia...)

    13. Re:Hmm. by aetherworld · · Score: 1

      You're just not slapping hard enough :>

    14. Re:Hmm. by d3ac0n · · Score: 1

      Aside from the oooohs and aaaahs, good sex sounds like "gluck, gluck, gluck..."

      Really?

      I've always thought it sounded more like "Shlorp, shlorp, shlorp." But maybe my wife and I are wetter/sloppier than most. ;)

      --
      Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
  2. Thanks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    now i gotta go pee...

    1. Re:Thanks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      now i gotta go pee...

      Well, the story title sounds more like number 2 to me.

    2. Re:Thanks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think I just wet myself

  3. Graphical Adventures by Celeste+R · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is a simulation physicist's wet dream, and I'm sure it'll be somewhere in a graphical adventure soon.

    My bet is that the FPS genre will like this too.

    --
    There are no perfect answers, only the right questions. More questions at http://foresightandhindsight.blogspot.com/
    1. Re:Graphical Adventures by Hurricane78 · · Score: 1

      I'll just say: BioShock 2 or 3!

      Although I would love more, to see a Terminator 4 game with BioShock 2/3 graphics and a System Shock 1/2 style evil futuristic system (Skynet) in it.

      --
      Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
    2. Re:Graphical Adventures by weirdcrashingnoises · · Score: 1

      wet dream

      pun intended?

      --
      sigs... don't talk to me about sigs....
    3. Re:Graphical Adventures by Celeste+R · · Score: 1

      Yes, pun-ishment intended.

      --
      There are no perfect answers, only the right questions. More questions at http://foresightandhindsight.blogspot.com/
    4. Re:Graphical Adventures by Brian+Gordon · · Score: 1

      You're sure? Well I'm sure that it's much easier to just record the sound of water than simulate it in real time to get the same sound. We'll see it eventually (maybe when it's even remotely feasible?) but nobody's in a hurry to start measuring their games in seconds-per-frame.. well, maybe CryTek.

    5. Re:Graphical Adventures by Brian+Gordon · · Score: 3, Informative

      From TFA, three single drops of water took one and a half hours to simulate. The babbling water simulation took over 12 hours.

    6. Re:Graphical Adventures by master5o1 · · Score: 3, Informative

      I'm assuming that the simulation can then be used to add distortions. Say, water trickling down a creek, and ducks splashing. The two sounds would be distorted by both the direction they are coming from and the interaction of the two sounds. The idea would be to make the sounds more realistic without having to record every possible case.

      Mind you, I haven't yet read the article (or summary) and I am not a sound engineer of any sort.

      --
      signature is pants
    7. Re:Graphical Adventures by weirdcrashingnoises · · Score: 1

      it depends. in modern games you have for the most part fixed and predictable levels and design.

      Imagine in the future games where the game world (environment) is truly active and/or deformable. a bit of an extreme example, but imagine setting off a large number of high explosives at the top of a waterfall, physically changing the land over which the water flows. with this kind of system, the flow of water would change, and as a result the sound would change.

      or maybe imagine blowing up part of a riverbed, or causing a massive land slide that changes the shape or course of a river. And i'm talking about 100% player based decisions, with a realistic game world reaction, not some pre-scripted event in the game.

      for the most part it probably wouldn't matter, and recordings would work well and probably be easier. but it would be cool anyways, at least in my mind.

      --
      sigs... don't talk to me about sigs....
    8. Re:Graphical Adventures by Junior+J.+Junior+III · · Score: 1

      I can't wait to play this as yet undeveloped game. The procedurally generated splashing noises should greatly enhance gameplay... uh, wait can't they just make fun games that don't require a cluster worth of processing just to procedurally simulate the sounds of fluids?

      --
      You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
    9. Re:Graphical Adventures by BobisOnlyBob · · Score: 1

      Give it a few years and it'll be built into Havok and used as lazily as every other feature.

    10. Re:Graphical Adventures by ihavnoid · · Score: 1

      Of course, it is cheaper to just use the record right now. However, it isn't that simple.

      What I find, is that the situation is similar to animated videos. You can draw some cartoonish character, a few cuts manually, and send the whole stuff to some country with massive number of people drawing all the in-between scenes *manually*. Just like 'The Simpsons' or 'South Park' or whatsoever.

      On the other side, you can just generate everything using your computer. Create some 3D model of some character, create a virtual world, and then make it act. Examples are those stuff from Pixar or Dreamworks.

      The problem isn't just whether it is realistic or not. Another aspect of this stuff is productivity. For example, if you are playing some kind of MMORPG and you want to have every character to have some kind of voice, good luck hiring a horde of voice actors for a gazillion number of lines. Instead, you can write some kind of 'voice simulator' which does text-to-speech remarkably well, and let it create all the recordings. No actors, just computers. Much cheaper.

      Actually, recording realistic sound effects are really difficult, because it isn't just 'stick the microphone to the stuff that emits the sound'. Recording the perfect sound effect actually takes a lot of engineering and trial-and-error, which can be really expensive if you want to take a lot of sound effects.

      In conclusion, real-time synthesis - probably not yet. Content generation - definitely yes.

    11. Re:Graphical Adventures by dkleinsc · · Score: 1

      This is a simulation physicist's wet dream

      Since this is going to be happening in New Orleans, I'd say it's an extremely wet dream. Like up to your attic wet. Particularly with all those splash and sploosh noises.

      --
      I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
    12. Re:Graphical Adventures by The+Archon+V2.0 · · Score: 1

      From TFA, three single drops of water took one and a half hours to simulate. The babbling water simulation took over 12 hours.

      That's okay, we could prerender it and just use the recording! Sure, you could just record REAL water, but, damn it, if I wanted real water I'd go outside! I don't like reality! It sucks! I expect objects to appear in my hands when I step on them! When I die, I expect to respawn in my base(ment)! I want all injuries to color my vision red for a moment and then do nothing to impair me! I want to survive multiple gunshot wounds to the chest just because I happen to be carrying a few first-aid kits (that I just stepped on)!

      (And if you don't believe me that reality is worse than synthetics, tell me that speech synthesis voice acting would be appreciably worse than anything available on http://www.audioatrocities.com/ )

    13. Re:Graphical Adventures by moortak · · Score: 1

      I think early uses would just be to have more realistic sounds when walking through streams and such.

      --
      Xavier Rabourdin for president 2012
  4. How long until this is realtime? by Sowelu · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I want a simulation program where I can move around rocks and pools and have a water hose. Used to do this all the time in the backyard as a kid, it would be nice to do it without getting wet or wasting water. Wonder how long until this is realtime? My kids, of course, won't get to play with it. They need to play in the REAL backyard.

    1. Re:How long until this is realtime? by Hurricane78 · · Score: 1

      Play BioShock (1 or 2).

      (But the "kids" will not be that nice. ^^)

      --
      Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
    2. Re:How long until this is realtime? by sharkey · · Score: 2, Funny

      I want a simulation program where I can move around rocks and pools and have a water hose.

      We are going to flood the world, General Disarray! Muahahahaah!

      --

      --
      "Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
    3. Re:How long until this is realtime? by spartacus_prime · · Score: 1

      Simpsons did it!

      --
      If you can read this, it means that I bothered to log in.
  5. Can they by schrodingers_rabbit · · Score: 1, Interesting

    simulate real systems yet, or just computer-generated ones? Better simulations of the relationships between fluid and sound would be fascinating if applied to superfluids (Ahhh, the soothing sound of superhot plasma).

    --
    #Computers do not appreciate sarcasm
    1. Re:Can they by Brian+Gordon · · Score: 3, Informative

      I don't think you understand the word simulation. It's all computer-modelled; you can't take a picture of some plasma and expect the computer to simulate it.

    2. Re:Can they by schrodingers_rabbit · · Score: 0

      Oops. I meant to say "Can they make realistic simulations of situations that occur in real life, by plugging in the same rules, amounts, physical constants, etc., or is the technology limited to tap water?" Thank you for correcting my mistake.

      --
      #Computers do not appreciate sarcasm
  6. What we've all been waiting for by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Funny

    Finally bukakke (and less ... pleasant) hentai anime with realistic sound. Yay.

    What? What did YOU think this is for?

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    1. Re:What we've all been waiting for by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Clearly this is to simulate realistic enema sounds and dripped blood for hentai anime. Bukakke is for weirdos.

    2. Re:What we've all been waiting for by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You aren't alone in thinking that, especially now CGI porn is starting to look pretty real, or so they tell me ;)

    3. Re:What we've all been waiting for by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bukkake is pleasant? What kind of sicko are you!?!?

  7. In other news... by youn · · Score: 4, Funny

    In other news from the overpriced useless ressearch dept... the research has found an unexpected application... generating fart sounds from facial expressions... thus giving speech to farts. a student called in for volunteer testing of the system said, "amazing! it actually sounds like me... I was always embarassed because my farts didnt make any sound... now I know wether it is a pzzzt or a plrrrrt or a puffff.... Thank you"

    Privacy right groups caution against wide use of the system, "We got to preserve the right to privacy while farting... imagine if these devices were everywhere? our privacy would be gone like the wind"

    --
    Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that :p
    1. Re:In other news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Somewhat relatedly, the paper contains the line:

      Splash, splatter, babble, sploosh, drip, drop, bloop and ploop!

    2. Re:In other news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What, you never made something for fun? Never wrote a fun program just to see if you could? What the hell are you doing on slashdot?
      I thought this was pretty fucking awesome.

    3. Re:In other news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In other news from the overpriced useless ressearch dept...

      Not sure if this is overpriced useless research. The research can help in designing items that interact with fluid, do so quietly. Submarines, landscape design, washing machines and hydroelectricity fit the bill but there must be plenty more.

    4. Re:In other news... by Tony-A · · Score: 1

      Hmmm....
      is the passed tense of "Bing" ..... "Bung"?

  8. Finally! by Extremus · · Score: 1

    Why did they take so much time to develop this? Now, they need to develop a more generic algorithm, for other kinds of materials.

    1. Re:Finally! by fractoid · · Score: 2, Funny

      Generic algorithms are only really useful if you want to model evorution. :P

      --
      Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
    2. Re:Finally! by TapeCutter · · Score: 1

      The "generic algorithim" in physical simulations is called "finite element analysis". All they would need to do is swap some constants in the formula for other liquids. For solids they may have to change the formula but the algorithim would still be the same.

      The same algorithim is used in everthing from climate simulation to casting simulations for engine blocks to simulating the trajectory of space probes. The technique is not new but supercomuters have used it to quietly revolutionise science and engineering over the last 50yrs or so.

      --
      And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
  9. The simulation sounded muffled. by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The simulation sounded somewhat muffled, like the high frequency components weren't right or weren't of sufficient amplitude.

    Can some of the rest of you listen and tell me if it sounds muffled to you too? (I want to be sure it's not my machine or earphones.)

    Might be the CODEC used with flash rather than the original simulation itself...

    --
    Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
    1. Re:The simulation sounded muffled. by Carnildo · · Score: 4, Informative

      The effect reminds me strongly of the water sounds in Myst. I think it's an artefact of recording flowing water in isolation: without an environment to reflect the sounds, the frequency mix isn't right.

      --
      "They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
    2. Re:The simulation sounded muffled. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Can some of the rest of you listen and tell me if it sounds muffled to you too?

      sounded great to me, but i the parts with the pipe did not include the high-frequency noise of water streaming through the pipe.

    3. Re:The simulation sounded muffled. by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yeah, I agree. In all honesty the sounds are about as good as the animations. Recognizable, but clearly not real. I think they would have done better if they had just gotten a microphone and sampled some real water.

      On the other hand, maybe someone with a good ear can come along and adjust the algorithms until they really DO sound good. Much like computer visual art isn't all that great unless someone with artistic talent is deploying it.

      --
      Qxe4
    4. Re:The simulation sounded muffled. by Brian+Gordon · · Score: 1

      I think that human hearing is very subjective and modelling sound accurately is more important than making flashy videos that sound perfect to you.

    5. Re:The simulation sounded muffled. by Brian+Gordon · · Score: 1

      The point was model how water makes sounds when it hits itself - it's through microscopic turbulence around bubbles. Water streaming past a solid surface has been done before.

    6. Re:The simulation sounded muffled. by hannson · · Score: 1

      They sounded a little weird to me also. Perhaps it is actually "correctly" synthesized but sounds weird because the sounsd from a real life splash (which we're used to) is a bit distorted before it hits our ears (echo, noise and other variables). I'm sure this could be made to sound even better (normal) with a sound equalizer and other lightweight tools.

    7. Re:The simulation sounded muffled. by BiggerIsBetter · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The effect reminds me strongly of the water sounds in Myst. I think it's an artefact of recording flowing water in isolation: without an environment to reflect the sounds, the frequency mix isn't right.

      The reflections make a huge difference to the sound, and probably a huge difference in processing time too. This simulation + an environment around the source + surround sound (eg binaural processing, for us folks with earphones) would be very cool indeed.

      Can we do audio-tracing on a GPU yet?

      --
      Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
    8. Re:The simulation sounded muffled. by ephraimX · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Er... You're kind of missing the point, I think, which is that it's really neat to be able to get it that good entirely by synthesis. Without doing any sampling.

    9. Re:The simulation sounded muffled. by Another,+completely · · Score: 1

      I wondered about this too. I think it could do with some reverb and general acoustic massage, but then I thought that might be the point. They are simulating the "pure" sound, which can then be combined with some other model to make it sound like it's in a cave, cathedral, street, etc. Their paper is about producing that initial input, so that's the version they present, although they might do well to include a processed version as well (just for interest).

    10. Re:The simulation sounded muffled. by TropicalCoder · · Score: 1

      It is not your machine or earphones, or the codec that is attenuating hi frequencies. Look carefully at the spectrogram accompanying the image. You can expand the image to hi resolution to examine it more carefully. You will note that the peak amplitudes of the frequencies generated cluster from around 500 Hz to 1500 Hz, with much lower amplitudes outside of that range.

    11. Re:The simulation sounded muffled. by Yoozer · · Score: 1

      Can we do audio-tracing on a GPU yet?

      http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=241339 has reverb (algorithmic, not convolution-based) running on the GPU.

    12. Re:The simulation sounded muffled. by Gulthek · · Score: 1

      Unfortunately it just sounds like their simulation is (for all of their tremendous effort!) quite lacking.

    13. Re:The simulation sounded muffled. by Pictish+Prince · · Score: 1

      That's what I was thinking. If they can create such complex algorithms, why can't they encode a simple video and upload it. The one they put up there is totally screwed.

      --
      Only his tendency toward a dazed stupor prevented him from screaming aloud.
    14. Re:The simulation sounded muffled. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It sounded right to me... but then again I have an auditory-processing disorder. :P

  10. Virtual real time pooping by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    4 words: Virtual real time pooping

    1. Re:Virtual real time pooping by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      AKA Cybershitting

  11. What is going on here? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's WOULD. And ONOMATOPOEIA.

    I want a refund!

    1. Re:What is going on here? by jonadab · · Score: 1

      Indeed, from onoma (third declension, mat-stem noun meaning "name") and poieo (epsilon-contract thematic verb meaning "make"): onomatopoeia, a word that makes the sound of its own name.

      Spelling is so much easier when you know the etymology.

      --
      Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
  12. brilliant work by junglebeast · · Score: 1

    Sounds amazingly good for a first paper on the subject, I'm sure the kinks will get worked out as more researchers ply their talent

  13. Need to do a blind comparison by istartedi · · Score: 1

    They sound too "chirpy" and "sharp" to me. It seems like there should be more noise in them. I wonder if this is just because I know they are synthesized. We need to do a blind comparison to see if it's good enough.

    --
    For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
    1. Re:Need to do a blind comparison by McNihil · · Score: 1

      I agree the water seems to have the wrong viscosity (too low) making it too tense of a sound.

      But I could be wrong and its the rendering that has a slight speed up.

    2. Re:Need to do a blind comparison by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mod parent up for sig.

  14. hundreds of millions have no clean water by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    but we are hard at work simulating it!!!

    (lets not even talk about the computer factories in china that pollute the water table there)

  15. Should be in Blender by Trebawa · · Score: 0

    This needs to be in Blender, NOW. This would add a whole new degree of realism to the fluidsims.

  16. What about splorp!? by splorp! · · Score: 1

    I've always enjoyed utilizing an onomatopoetic nickname.

    --
    Please don't humanize the morons around me. It makes me very uncomfortable.
  17. Why spend time on this? by jerrydel · · Score: 1

    It's technically impressive and all, but what's the point? For games you can just record the real thing, and what other use is there?

    1. Re:Why spend time on this? by The+MESMERIC · · Score: 1

      if you have the code, you can modify it or experiment further to create impressive textural .. ok more life "fluid" .. soundscapes. Add that to music production and whoosh / wow / ahhhhhh ok ...

    2. Re:Why spend time on this? by PenisLands · · Score: 1

      Why not?

  18. Wonder how they got the idea? by Comen · · Score: 1

    Might have been sitting around smoking on a bong and thought hmmmmm

  19. Poop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Pooping?

    1. Re:Poop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Pooping?

      False alarm.

  20. Linux is mainstream now in science by tsa · · Score: 1

    Do we really need to know the sounds were calculated using a Linux cluster? Linux is popular enough in science now to leave that away.
     
    And I'm sorry, but only the stone that was thrown in the water sounded convincing. I did like how they could add water to the already full container without it overflowing, though!

    --

    -- Cheers!

    1. Re:Linux is mainstream now in science by andrewd18 · · Score: 1

      If they can add water to a full container, is it really full?

  21. News? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I thought sending "Bring me a bottle of beer buttler Bob" through any text-to-speach did exactly that.

  22. I've been waiting for this for years by MattMooreSucks · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I've been thinking about this type of thing for a while now - getting to a more basic level of sound reproduction, like we've been doing the last few years with graphics. Compare this to lighting in the Quake era, compared to today. Before, we had pre-rendered lighting in the .bsp, or worse (painting it on the texture). Now's it's simulated at a more basic (read: realistic) level, like a lower level emulator, with real-time lighting. And just as Doom 3's lighting was innovative but not terribly practical for many uses, so is this beginning of low-level synthesized sound. I hope we make large strides at both. For the record, this is my first (evar) post on slashdot. After reading for years. How do I line-break exactly?

    1. Re:I've been waiting for this for years by TropicalCoder · · Score: 1

      You need to know a smattering of HTML. The line break is
      which of coarse just broke this line instead of displaying. What I did was left_angle_bracket followed by br followed by right_angle_bracket. This sentence begins with left_angle_bracket followed by p followed by right_angle_bracket, and ends with left_angle_bracket followed by forward_slash followed by p followed by right_angle_bracket

    2. Re:I've been waiting for this for years by imakemusic · · Score: 1

      Doom 3 had lighting??

      You line break with html: <br />

      --
      Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
    3. Re:I've been waiting for this for years by TropicalCoder · · Score: 1

      I've been working on this backwards. I developed this wonderful spectrum analyser and now would like to stick it into a graphic environment where various visual events are generated from analysis of the audio. Download it and load in a wav file or mp3 and you will see the display. Individual musical notes are displayed. Then you could control a graphic based on the flow of the music, for example. Of course, it has all been done before, but I don't believe I have seen this level of resolution done in real time before. Ideas?

  23. Am I the only one... by hedleyroos · · Score: 2, Funny

    who thought that those are the names of new social networking sites?

  24. Procedural generation by ledow · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Looks like PC gaming is likely to be heading more and more towards procedural generation of the universe. Real-time shadows, dynamic lighting and now, dynamic sounds.

    It'll all make it more realistic (but at a high CPU cost!) - being able to not have "splish, splosh, splish, splosh" when wading through water but a full-on sound relative to individual parts - bullet shells, limbs, objects in the water, etc. We won't see it *practically* for years, but gaming is getting closer and closer to that dream of "virtual reality", where you won't be able to tell the difference between a real scene and a computer generated one without touching it.

    I think you can make uses of it in gaming too, extending the basic science to a consumer level - skim stones across water that sound like they're being skimmed (and with proper fluid physics similar to that which we already have, individual sploshes and waves etc. affecting that stone) - or be able to throw a coin into water behind an enemy and see if you can use it to distract him. Maybe even, the bubbles that you breath underwater hitting the surface with their true sounds, thus giving your position away if you were hoping that holding your breath would let that enemy walk past you without hearing you.

    When you play games, you don't notice the "cheats" at first - the static sounds that just play on certain events, the pre-lit textures, the echoing of sounds generated inside a certain fixed area. Even in things like HL2, boxes thrown into water either splosh or don't, splosh based on certain primitive criteria that provide a few levels of believability. But as new technology comes along to make it possible to actually *create* that effect rather than script it, everything suddenly feels much more alive.

    Dynamic sound has to be one of the next "big" areas - hitting a wall with an axe in a game used to give "Doink", then it gave a selection of "Doink, Donk, Doink, Donk" sounds each time. Moving forwards, the only way is to actually determine exact angles, shapes of the wall (proper destructible objects for everything are, sadly, still only a dream) and to generate a simulation of the sound it would produce (how cool would it be that if you strike the axe slightly off, you get a reverberating axe coming back at you, with a horrible sound that tells you not to do it?. Maybe even with the axe breaking on a critical point if you mis-use it too much, e.g. try and chop at a steel wall).

    We already have proper echoing and other effects available and 7.1 surround can take away the whole "Where the hell did that come from?" effect if it's too clinically applied. But having sounds *generated* by the interactions within an environment... wow. Imagine Left4Dead-style atmosphere, but with proper echo effects... you walk towards a corner and from around it, a zombie stumbles into a puddle - suddenly the sound not only tells you there's something near, but the echoes from the corners confuse just as in real life, and the sound is only the tiniest little splish, and it may even be possible to determine the *type* of zombie around the corner by the type of splash it makes - something with a large flat foot would create an enormous popping bubble of a sound, something with stick-like appendages would generate barely a ripple.

    This will have a small but critical effect on gaming and, I imagine, a million other uses. But we're *years* away from seeing it used.

    1. Re:Procedural generation by TropicalCoder · · Score: 1

      To get real time sound effects, to begin with you will need use a better audio driver such as ASIO. DirectX just won't cut it because of the latency.

  25. As usual, Slashdot, not first. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Download the paper. Check the citations. Right there, several previous papers on the topic of liquid sound synthesis.

    For example, this one from 2004 which I'd read previously is cited:

    http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~kvdoel/publications/prep04.pdf

    I'm sure this is awesome research. Don't ruin it by surrounding it in claims that are not true.

    (It seems it's just the Slashdot summary saying this, I don't see any claims of "first" in the article or the paper..)

    1. Re:As usual, Slashdot, not first. by radarsat1 · · Score: 1

      I posted the above anonymously by accident. Anyways, I forgot that for the van den Doel paper, there was also an on-line Java applet demonstrating the technique:

      http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~kvdoel/icad2004/

  26. Yes but... by IceCreamGuy · · Score: 2, Funny

    Check out some videos of falling, pouring, splashing and babbling water simulations. (computed on a Linux cluster).

    Yes but does it run on a beow... oh. Sweet.

  27. Sploosh by HomelessInLaJolla · · Score: 0

    Sploosh was the name of a popular IRC channel bot coded by Joe Ciccone for use with the Linuxfromscratch IRC community. More information here.

    Sometimes I really miss those days filled with IRC chat on multiple servers, endless hours of compiling (on 400 MHz P2 and K6-3 processor based systems), bug reporting, troubleshooting, cooking, brewing tea, tracking CNN, watching SciFi, and trying to manage a corporate career and still enjoy life.

    --
    the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
  28. Not new by a long shot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is by no means the first bubble algorithm. D. Keller published work in the '90's on granular synthesis of natural sounds that includes water drops, splashes and filling sounds. There's been a lot work done in physical modeling (Perry Cook et al.) on water sounds. Nothing new here.

  29. The driving force behind most new technology by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That was close to my first thought: the overdubs for pornos are going to have a lot more realistic sounds effects now!

  30. I hate when by professorflipwig · · Score: 1

    people start the comment in the title.

    --
    Hostes futuri sint socii.