{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,29]],"date-time":"2026-05-29T09:28:31Z","timestamp":1780046911737,"version":"3.53.1"},"reference-count":30,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"2","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2019,5,13]],"date-time":"2019-05-13T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1557705600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["MTI"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Urban traffic noise situations are usually visualized as conventional 2D maps or 3D scenes. These representations are indispensable tools to inform decision makers and citizens about issues of health, safety, and quality of life but require expert knowledge in order to be properly understood and put into context. The subjectivity of how we perceive noise as well as the inaccuracies in common noise calculation standards are rarely represented. We present a virtual reality application that seeks to offer an audiovisual glimpse into the background workings of one of these standards, by employing a multisensory, immersive analytics approach that allows users to interactively explore and listen to an approximate rendering of the data in the same environment that the noise simulation occurs in. In order for this approach to be useful, it should manage complicated noise level calculations in a real time environment and run on commodity low-cost VR hardware. In a prototypical implementation, we utilized simple VR interactions common to current mobile VR headsets and combined them with techniques from data visualization and sonification to allow users to explore road traffic noise in an immersive real-time urban environment. The noise levels were calculated over CityGML LoD2 building geometries, in accordance with Common Noise Assessment Methods in Europe (CNOSSOS-EU) sound propagation methods.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/mti3020034","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2019,5,13]],"date-time":"2019-05-13T11:00:57Z","timestamp":1557745257000},"page":"34","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":30,"title":["Combining VR Visualization and Sonification for Immersive Exploration of Urban Noise Standards"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"3","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-5232-0039","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Markus","family":"Berger","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, University of Rostock, Justus-von-Liebig-Weg 6, 18051 Rostock, Germany"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-5520-5271","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Ralf","family":"Bill","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, University of Rostock, Justus-von-Liebig-Weg 6, 18051 Rostock, Germany"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,5,13]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","unstructured":"Wing, L.C., Kwan, L.C., and Kwong, T.M. (2006). Visualization of Complex Noise Environment by Virtual Reality Technologies, Environment Protection Department (EPD)."},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"271","DOI":"10.1016\/S0003-682X(00)00030-X","article-title":"A critical review of some traffic noise prediction models","volume":"62","author":"Steele","year":"2001","journal-title":"Appl. Acoust."},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Kang, J. (2006). Urban Sound Environment, CRC Press.","DOI":"10.1201\/9781482265613"},{"key":"ref_4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"10","DOI":"10.1016\/j.eiar.2013.01.007","article-title":"Immersive virtual reality and environmental noise assessment: An innovative audio\u2013visual approach","volume":"41","author":"Ruotolo","year":"2013","journal-title":"Environ. Impact Assess. Rev."},{"key":"ref_5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"98","DOI":"10.1016\/j.landurbplan.2017.05.018","article-title":"Using Virtual Reality for assessing the role of noise in the audio-visual design of an urban public space","volume":"167","author":"Sanchez","year":"2017","journal-title":"Landsc. Urban Plan."},{"key":"ref_6","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"180","DOI":"10.1016\/j.landurbplan.2016.03.013","article-title":"Evaluating a visual-acoustic simulation for wind park assessment","volume":"153","author":"Manyoky","year":"2016","journal-title":"Landsc. Urban Plan."},{"key":"ref_7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1016\/j.landurbplan.2017.04.012","article-title":"Audio-visual perception of new wind parks","volume":"165","author":"Yu","year":"2017","journal-title":"Landsc. Urban Plan."},{"key":"ref_8","unstructured":"(2019, May 10). Mapbox\u2014Maps for Unity. Available online: https:\/\/www.mapbox.com\/unity\/."},{"key":"ref_9","unstructured":"Ejima, K., Kashiyama, K., Tanigawa, M., and Shimura, M. (2013, January 11\u201314). A road traffic noise evaluation system considering a stereoscopic sound field using virtual reality technology. Proceedings of the 5th Asia Pacific Congress on Computational Mechanics and the 4th International Symposium on Computational Mechanics, Singapore."},{"key":"ref_10","unstructured":"Kephalopoulos, S., Paviotti, M., and Ledee, F.A. (2012). Common Noise Assessment Methods in Europe (CNOSSOS-EU), European Union."},{"key":"ref_11","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Yu, T., Behm, H., Bill, R., and Kang, J. (2018). Validity of VR Technology on the Smartphone for the Study of Wind Park Soundscapes. ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf., 7.","DOI":"10.3390\/ijgi7040152"},{"key":"ref_12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Bozgeyikli, E., Raij, A., Katkoori, S., and Dubey, R. (2016, January 16\u201319). Point & teleport locomotion technique for virtual reality. Proceedings of the 2016 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play, Austin, TX, USA.","DOI":"10.1145\/2967934.2968105"},{"key":"ref_13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Schinke, T., Henze, N., and Boll, S. (2010, January 7\u201310). Visualization of off-screen objects in mobile augmented reality. Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services, Lisbon, Portugal.","DOI":"10.1145\/1851600.1851655"},{"key":"ref_14","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Lorenz, H., Trapp, M., D\u00f6llner, J., and Jobst, M. (2008). Interactive multi-perspective views of virtual 3D landscape and city models. The European Information Society, Springer.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-540-78946-8_16"},{"key":"ref_15","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"K\u00e4ser, D.P., Parker, E., Glazier, A., Podwal, M., Seegmiller, M., Wang, C.P., Karlsson, P., Ashkenazi, N., Kim, J., and Le, A. (August, January 30). The making of Google earth VR. Proceedings of the ACM SIGGRAPH 2017 Talks, Los Angeles, CA, USA.","DOI":"10.1145\/3084363.3085094"},{"key":"ref_16","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Abdul-Rahman, A. (2017). 3D complete traffic noise analysis based on CityGML. Advances in 3D Geoinformation, Springer International Publishing. Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-319-25691-7"},{"key":"ref_17","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Park, J.W., Yun, C.H., Jung, H.S., and Lee, Y.W. (2011, January 4\u20139). Visualization of urban air pollution with cloud computing. Proceedings of the 2011 IEEE World Congress on Services, Washington, DC, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/SERVICES.2011.111"},{"key":"ref_18","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"907","DOI":"10.1080\/13658810701739039","article-title":"3D noise mapping in urban areas","volume":"22","author":"Stoter","year":"2008","journal-title":"Int. J. Geogr. Inf. Sci."},{"key":"ref_19","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Luboschik, M., Berger, P., and Staadt, O. (2016, January 6\u20139). On spatial perception issues in augmented reality based immersive analytics. Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Companion on Interactive Surfaces and Spaces, Niagara Falls, ON, Canada.","DOI":"10.1145\/3009939.3009947"},{"key":"ref_20","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Wagner Filho, J.A., Rey, M.F., Freitas, C.M., and Nedel, L. (2018, January 18\u201322). Immersive visualization of abstract information: An evaluation on dimensionally-reduced data scatterplots. Proceedings of the 2018 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR), Reutlingen, Germany.","DOI":"10.1109\/VR.2018.8447558"},{"key":"ref_21","unstructured":"Hermann, T. (2008, January 24\u201327). Taxonomy and definitions for sonification and auditory display. Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Auditory Display, Paris, France."},{"key":"ref_22","unstructured":"(2019, May 10). Unity Technologies\u2014Unity Engine Documentation for Audio Spatialization. Available online: https:\/\/docs.unity3d.com\/ScriptReference\/AudioSource-spatialize.html."},{"key":"ref_23","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Bies, D.A., Hansen, C., and Howard, C. (2017). Engineering Noise Control, CRC Press.","DOI":"10.1201\/9781315273464"},{"key":"ref_24","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"308","DOI":"10.1177\/0018720811405196","article-title":"Characteristics of head-mounted displays and their effects on simulator sickness","volume":"53","author":"Moss","year":"2011","journal-title":"Hum. Factors"},{"key":"ref_25","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Davis, S., Nesbitt, K., and Nalivaiko, E. (2014, January 2\u20133). A systematic review of cybersickness. Proceedings of the 2014 Conference on Interactive Entertainment, Newcastle, NSW, Australia.","DOI":"10.1145\/2677758.2677780"},{"key":"ref_26","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"van Waveren, J.M. (2016, January 2\u20134). The asynchronous time warp for virtual reality on consumer hardware. Proceedings of the 22nd ACM Conference on Virtual Reality Software and Technology, Munich, Germany.","DOI":"10.1145\/2993369.2993375"},{"key":"ref_27","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1613","DOI":"10.1109\/TVCG.2018.2794098","article-title":"Diffraction Kernels for Interactive Sound Propagation in Dynamic Environments","volume":"24","author":"Rungta","year":"2018","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph."},{"key":"ref_28","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"25","DOI":"10.1080\/17538947.2017.1404150","article-title":"CityGML goes mobile: Application of large 3D CityGML models on smartphones","volume":"12","author":"Blut","year":"2019","journal-title":"Int. J. Digit. Earth"},{"key":"ref_29","unstructured":"Weibetaker, T., Kunert, A., Frohlich, B., and Kulik, A. (2018, January 18\u201322). Spatial updating and simulator sickness during steering and jumping in immersive virtual environments. Proceedings of the 2018 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR), Reutlingen, Germany."},{"key":"ref_30","unstructured":"Funkhouser, T., Tsingos, N., and Jot, J.M. (2019, May 10). Survey of Methods for Modeling Sound Propagation in Interactive Virtual Environment Systems. Available online: https:\/\/www.cs.princeton.edu\/~funk\/presence03.pdf."}],"container-title":["Multimodal Technologies and Interaction"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2414-4088\/3\/2\/34\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,11]],"date-time":"2025-10-11T12:51:31Z","timestamp":1760187091000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2414-4088\/3\/2\/34"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2019,5,13]]},"references-count":30,"journal-issue":{"issue":"2","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,6]]}},"alternative-id":["mti3020034"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mti3020034","relation":{},"ISSN":["2414-4088"],"issn-type":[{"value":"2414-4088","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2019,5,13]]}}}