Generating a virtual acoustic environment to approximate the soundscape of a historical cathedral

This paper focuses on the generation of a virtual acoustic environment of a historical cathedral basilica located in St. Augustine, Florida, USA. The virtual acoustic environment is an effective means to study a cultural heritage's soundscape that restricts visitors from accessing and being quiet. The author used a laser scanner to capture the reality of the cathedral's interior, in order to maximize the visual perception of the worship space, and created a 3D digital textured mesh model using the points cloud generated from laser scanning. The spatial experience recorded by a 360 camera with an ambisonic microphone provided the virtual soundwalk at multiple locations. The background and foreground sound were synthesized in Unity using the same music recordings that the church used during the day. The sound pressure levels were closely matched with the ones measured by a sound level meter. The virtual acoustic environment was simulated by using spatial applications in Unity and optimized through the comparison of the room acoustical measurements performed based on ISO 3382.