Ass. Prof. Dr. Mark Lindquist, who completed his PhD at the Department of Landscape at the University of Sheffield, just published a paper in Landscape and Urban Planning summarizing his findings about the contribution of sound to the perception of landscape visualisations.
His key research findings are:
- Sound significantly alters perceptual responses to 3D landscape visualizations.
- Realism and preference are moderated by congruency of visual and sound content
- Eye level Google Earth visualizations receive low realism ratings.
- Aural-visual survey data collected via the web is comparable to laboratory data.
- Sound and visuals that are spatiotemporally congruent are recommended for simulations.
You can read and download the fully accessible open source paper by Lindquist, Lange and Kang (2016) here: From 3D landscape visualization to environmental simulation: The contribution of sound to the perception of virtual environments
![Views and landscape elements used in the research: view 1 (top row); view 2 (middle row); view 3 (bottom row); by visual condition (1 left column; 2 middle column; 3 right column) (©Google Earth).](http://www.lviz.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Lindquist1.jpg)