Fast Tracing of Acoustic Beams and Paths Through Visibility Lookup

The beam tracing method can be used for the fast tracing of a large number of acoustic paths through a direct lookup of a special tree-like data structure (beam tree) that describes the iterated visibility information from one specific position. This structure describes the branching of bundles of rays (beams) as they encounter reflectors in their paths. For this reason, beam tracing is suitable for real-time acoustic rendering even when the receiver is moving. In this paper, we propose a novel technique that enables the fast tracing of a large number of acoustic beams through the iterative lookup of a special data structure that describes the global visibility between reflectors. The method enables the immediate generation of the beam tree corresponding to an arbitrary source location, which can then be used for path tracing through direct lookup. In practice, this technique generalizes the traditional beam-tracing method as it makes it suitable for real-time acoustic rendering not ju...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2008
• Where: TASLP
• Authors: Fabio Antonacci, M. Foco, Augusto Sarti, Stefano Tubaro
• Keywords: Beam Tree, Direct Lookup, Fast Tracing, TASLP 2008