The Impact of Dynamic Cue and Audio Stimulus Type on Subjective Localization in VR Headsets

This paper presents a study on sound source localization using VR headsets, focusing on the effects of dynamic cues and audio stimulus types. Full-band white Gaussian noise and Mandarin Chinese speech stimuli were presented under two typical conditions with and without performing head tracking. All these tests were conducted within their corresponding visual scenes and human-computer interaction interfaces. Experimental results confirmed the significant influence of dynamic cue on audio localization in VR headset application scenarios. With head tracking, high-accuracy localization could be obtained for both speech and white Gaussian noise. However, without head tracking, although the overall localization performance for speech was superior to white Gaussian noise, the percentage of the front-back confusion was relatively high. This finding is consistent with previous research, which suggests that the front-back confusion problem can be mitigated through high-frequency spectral components or dynamic tracking. Our experiment corroborated previous findings within a VR context, linking various phenomena and providing explanations.