The spatialization resource visualizer is an inspector for sound objects in the soundscape, a visual debugger for sound objects in virtual reality environments. These are sound sources and sinks, generalization of listener and microphone. Figure 6 shows on the left a test scene with the corresponding sound objects in the visualizer on the right side. A special case involves virtual sound sources which do not exist in the virtual reality environment scene and are generated during the clustering process of the spatialization resource manager. The set of sound sources can be selected (using the preference menu, seen in Figure 5) to focus on all, active, virtual, or ambient sound sources. A sound source can be displayed using its core range, which is an ellipsoid, representing a zone with maximum intensity [Bell et al. 96] and its audible range, shown as a translucent ellipsoid, representing the space in which the source is audible. Between the two ranges the intensity drops off according to the square of the distance. Priority and intensity of the sound node may be included as textual values facing the user. Different states of a sound node can be conveyed using color codes for the core range.
Figure 6: Test scene with sound source visualization
