The OpenAIR (Open Acoustic Impulse Response Library) website (www.openairlib.net) is a repository of 3-D Ambisonic B-format impulse responses for auralization together with anechoic recordings that can be used to audition the sound of the acoustically surveyed buildings included on the site. This follow-on project is about developing new pathways to impact for the outcomes of this research through a collaboration with Codemasters, one of the world's leading, BAFTA award winning, UK based, computer game companies. The acoustics of the environments that we inhabit everyday affect us all in terms of how we communicate, project our voice, listen to our surroundings, and respond to excessive noise. For example, in music performance spaces the quality of the acoustics are critical for both audience and performer, and by considering the acoustic environment of heritage sites we make available new opportunities for both understanding and interpreting of the past. Developments in measuring the acoustic characteristics of concert halls and opera houses have resulted in standardised methods of impulse response capture for auralization. The impulse response is the acoustic fingerprint of a given space, uniquely defining its acoustic characteristics for particular sound source and listener positions. From these measurements objective acoustic parameters as used in the design process can be determined. Using audio convolution a virtual acoustic representation of the space can be constructed so that a listener can experience the same aural sensations as if they were actually present within it - this defines auralization, a term derived as the audio equivalent to visualisation. OpenAIR was established to facilitate wider access to a database of 3-D Ambisonic B-format impulse responses, together with the capability for further expansion and content management. Datasets from 16 acoustic spaces are currently available on the site and this data can be explored and processed non-destructively, with various combinations of impulse response measurements available for download. Codemasters advocate Ambisonic B-format audio in computer game sound design due to the flexible nature of how this 3-D audio format (that is, surround-sound with height information) might be used as a means of delivering high quality immersive audio content, despite almost certain variation in home playback systems or gaming platform. This common interest in the use of B-format audio highlights the synergy between the Codemasters team and the OpenAIR project. With OpenAIR, research questions in the acoustic modelling, measurement and characterisation of heritage spaces has driven dataset content. Codemasters however, require content that is appropriate for their games - which includes the acoustic impulse response of car interiors, open landscapes and the recording of particular ambiences to populate the sonic background of the virtual environments they create - all of which should be in Ambisonic B-format. New techniques are needed for effective measurement in such challenging real-world environments and OpenAIR needs to adapt to this new audio content to be of relevance to the requirements of the gaming industry. The effective use and integration of these audio assets in typical game audio authoring tools and workflows also needs to be investigated. This project will develop new means of acoustic measurement appropriate to both open landscapes and compact interiors, and redevelop OpenAIR to manage this new content. This project will result in new datasets specific to the needs of the gaming industry and Codemasters in particular, which will then be used in their next generation computer game titles. We will be able to test the feasibility of our research in a more commercial context and facilitate knowledge transfer between our two teams. Aspects of the datasets will also be made available via the OpenAIR website for the wider virtual acoustics community.

3D sound can offer listeners the experience of "being there" at a live event, such as the Proms or Olympic 100m, but currently requires highly controlled listening spaces and loudspeaker setups. The goal of S3A is to realise practical 3D audio for the general public to enable immersive experiences at home or on the move. Virtually the whole of the UK population consume audio. S3A aims to unlock the creative potential of 3D sound and deliver to listeners a step change in immersive experiences. This requires a radical new listener centred approach to audio enabling 3D sound production to dynamically adapt to the listeners' environment. Achieving immersive audio experiences in uncontrolled living spaces presents a significant research challenge. This requires major advances in our understanding of the perception of spatial audio together with new representations of audio and the signal processing that allows content creation and perceptually accurate reproduction. Existing audio production formats (stereo, 5.1) and those proposed for future cinema spatial audio (24,128) are channel-based requiring specific controlled loudspeaker arrangements that are simply not practical for the majority of home listeners. S3A will pioneer a novel object-based methodology for audio signal processing that allows flexible production and reproduction in real spaces. The reproduction will be adaptive to loudspeaker configuration, room acoustics and listener locations. The fields of audio and visual 3D scene understanding will be brought together to identify and model audio-visual objects in complex real scenes. Audio-visual objects are sound sources or events with known spatial properties of shape and location over time, e.g. a football being kicked, a musical instrument being played or the crowd chanting at a football match. Object based representation will transform audio production from existing channel based signal mixing (stereo, 5.1, 22.2) to spatial control of isolated sound sources and events. This will realise the creative potential of 3D sound enabling intelligent user-centred content production, transmission and reproduction of 3D audio content in platform independent formats. Object-based audio will allow flexible delivery (broadcast, IP and mobile) and adaptive reproduction of 3D sound to existing and new digital devices.

The digital games industry has global revenues of $65bn (in 2011) predicted to grow to $82bn by 2017. The UK is a major player, whose position at third internationally (behind the US and Japan) is under threat from China, South Korea and Canada. The £3bn UK market for games far exceeds DVD and movie box office receipts and music sales. Driven by technology advances, the industry has to reinvent itself every five years with the advent of new software, interaction and device technologies. The influential 2011 Nesta "Next Gen" review of the skills needs of the UK Games and Visual Effects industry found that more than half (58%) of video games employers report difficulties in filling positions with recruits direct from education and recommended a substantial strengthening of games industry-university research collaboration. IGGI will create a sustainable centre which will provide the ideal mechanism to consolidate the scientific, technical, social, cultural and cognitive dimensions of gaming, ensuring that the industry benefits from a cohort of exceptional research-trained postgraduates and harnessing research-led innovation to ensure that the UK remains at the forefront of innovation in digital games. The injection of 55+ highly qualified PhD graduates and their associated research projects will transform the way the games industry works with the academic community in the UK. IGGI will provide students with a deep grounding in the core technical and creative skills needed to design, develop and deliver a game, as well as training in the scientific, social, therapeutic and cultural possibilities offered by the study of games and games players. Throughout their PhDs the students will participate in practical industrial workshops, intensive game development challenges and a yearly industrialy-facing symposium. All students will undertake short- and longer-term placements with companies that develop and use games. These graduates will push the frontiers of research in interaction, media, artificial intelligence (AI) and computational creativity, creating new game-themed research areas at the boundaries of computer science and economics, sociology, biology, education, robotics and other fields. The two core themes of IGGI are: Intelligent Games - increasing the flow of intelligence from research into digital games. We will use research advances to seed the creation of a new generation of more intelligent and engaging digital games, to underpin the distinctiveness and growth of the UK games industry. The study of intelligent games will be underpinned by new business models and research advances in data mining (game analytics) which can exploit vast volumes of gameplay data. Game Intelligence - increasing the use of intelligence from games to achieve scientific and social goals. Analysis of gameplay data will allow us to understand individual behaviour and preference on a hitherto impossible scale, making games into a powerful new tool to achieve scientific and societal goals. We will work with user groups and the games industry to produce new genres of games which can yield therapeutic, educational and social benefits and use games to seed a new era of scientific experimentation into human behaviour, preference and interaction, in economics, sociology, psychology and human-computer-interaction. The IGGI CDT will provide a major advance in an area of great importance to the UK economy and massive impact on society. It will provide training for the leaders of the next generation of researchers, developers and entrepreneurs in digital games, forging economic growth through a distinctly innovative and research-engaged UK games industry. IGGI will massively boost the notion of digital games as a tool for scientific research and societal good.

The creative industries are crucial to UK social and cultural life and one of the largest and fastest-growing sectors of the economy. Games and media are key pillars for growth in the creative industries, with UK turnovers of £3.5bn and £12.9bn respectively. Research in digital creativity has started to be well supported by governmental funds. To achieve full impact from these investments, translational and audience-facing research activities are needed to turn ideas into commercial practice and societal good. We propose a "Digital Creativity" Hub for such next-step research, which will produce impact from a huge amount of research activity in direct collaboration with a large group of highly engaged stakeholders, delivering impact in the Digital Economy challenge areas of Sustainable Society, Communities and Culture and New Economic Models. York is the perfect location for the DC Hub, with a fast-growing Digital Creativity industry (which grew 18.4% from 2011 to 2012), and 4800 creative digital companies within a 40-mile radius of the city. The DC Hub will be housed in the Ron Cooke Hub, alongside the IGGI centre for doctoral training, world-class researchers, and numerous small hi-tech companies. The DC Hub brings: - A wealth of research outcomes from Digital Economy projects funded by £90m of grants, £40m of which was managed directly by the investigators named in the proposal. The majority of these projects are interdisciplinary collaborations which involved co-creation of research questions and approaches with creative industry partners, and all of them produced results which are ripe for translational impact. - Substantial cash and in-kind support amounting to pledges of £9m from 80 partner organisations. These include key organisations in the Digital Economy, such as the KTN, Creative England and the BBC, major companies such as BT, Sony and IBM, and a large number of SMEs working in games and interactive media. The host Universities have also pledged £3.3m in matched funding, with the University of York agreeing to hire four "transitional" research fellows on permanent contracts from the outset leading to academic positions as a Professor, a Reader and two Lecturers. - Strong overlap with current projects run by the investigators which have complementary goals. These include the NEMOG project to study new economic models and opportunities for games, the Intelligent Games and Game Intelligence (IGGI) centre for doctoral training, with 55+ PhDs, and the Falmouth ERA Chair project, which will contribute an extra 5 five-year research fellowships to the DC Hub, leveraging £2m of EC funding for translational research in digital games technologies. - A diverse and highly active base of 16 investigators and 4 named PDRAs across four universities, who have much experience of working together on funded research projects delivering high-impact results. The links between these investigators are many and varied, and interdisciplinarity is ensured by a group of investigators working across Computer Science, Theatre Film and TV, Electronics, Art, Audio Production, Sociology, Education, Psychology, and Business. - Huge potential for step-change impact in the creative industries, with particular emphasis on video game technologies, interactive media, and the convergence of games and media for science and society. Projects in these areas will be supported by and feed into basic research in underpinning themes of data analytics, business models, human-computer interaction and social science. The projects will range over impact themes comprising impact projects which will be specified throughout the life of the Hub in close collaboration with our industry partners, who will help shape the research, thus increasing the potential for major impact. - A management team, with substantial experience of working together on large projects for research and impact in collaboration with the digital creative industries.