Sound Visualization

	The card's front face	The card's back face

Synopsis

Graphical perception of the occurrence of sound.

Relationships

Context:
Sound Design in Games .
Less frequent context:
Play the Beat File:M385px-PlayTheBeat-front-v20.png.
May use:
Subtitles and Captions .
May relate to:
Sound Input .

Description

Sound Visualization consists in poviding graphical representations to accompany occurring sounds. There are some reasons for this to be interesting:

• Emphasising some aspect of the sound, by providing a cross-modal reinforcement of the perception.
• Enabling the game to be played and enjoyed without sound. In turn this is critical in several circumstances:
  • for playing in noisy environments (e.g. using mobile platforms)
  • for playing in places where the context obliges that the sound is mute or very low volume.
  • for deaf players
• In the particular case of Dialogue: overcome language comprehension difficulties by reading subtitles, possibly in another language, as explored in Subtitles and Captions.

One typical solution (common to the practice in movies) is to integrate in the subtitles (graphical representation of Dialogue)

Examples

Singstar:

Spore:

Cut the Rope:

[show less examples...]

Patapon: The all visual representation pulses with the sound - from the most objective, as the rectangle in the border and the drums' onomatopoeias (mapping the Sound Input), to the more subtle, as the moves and details of the characters (which map and the Sound Input and the sound they echo themselves).

FlOw:

Ecco:

Ocarina of Time:

iGadget: In this game, due to the option of not using Dialogue, the subtitles