3. Virtual sound source synthesis

The first step in the sound rendering pipeline is the synthesis of the sounds to be emitted by the virtual sources. Sound synthesis is a vast field which has been the subject of intense research, particularly for musical applications [126] [22] [115]. However, a particularity of virtual environments is that the sound sources to be synthesized are very rarely musical. Numerous original approaches have therefore been proposed in this field in order to realistically synthesize the immense variety of "natural" sound sources that can be encountered. In addition, the synthesis must be able to interact with the user's actions, or react automatically to interactions between objects (e.g. collisions). In this context, two main approaches can be distinguished:

• those that use recordings directly ;

• those that fully synthesize...