Ahk, I didn't realise that. I suppose it's not a huge leap to be able to calculate the distance the "viewer" is from the source of the sound, they angle they're on, what objects are in the way (size, material) in real time and have said parameters effect the sound?
What you're suggesting is both impossible and undesirable!
Impossible: A cinema has one sound system. It obviously cannot change it's aural POV depending on which direction you are looking unless the direction you are looking is exactly the same as the direction everyone else in the cinema is looking. In other words, if you are looking in one direction and another member of the audience is looking in another direction, a cinema sound system will never be able to create both different aural POVs at the same time. The only potentially possible solution to this problem would be to make movie watching an individual experience; everyone get's their own headset/headphones unit. There are three problems with this approach: 1. You no longer need a cinema, 2. The technology to create 3D sound in headphones does not exist. There is binaural technology which has been around for quite a while and is a sort of sophisticated, enhanced stereo but there are some complex issues with the technology for which it doesn't look like there will ever be solutions and 3. The physical properties of sound waves is and has been well understood for many decades. However, the information we can disseminate from those sound waves, how we perceive sound, is still poorly understood. It appears to be a bit of a "rabbit hole" situation; the last couple of decades has seen great advances in neuroscience and psychoacoustics but that additional knowledge has provided few, if any, actual answers or rather, the answers have just tended to raise more questions. For example, even the seemingly simple question of how we perceive musical pitch is not yet known. In more practical filmmaking terms, reverb units/plugins for example, are pretty complex/sophisticated these days but compared to how we hear, they are crude approximations. When it comes to POV, the position of the source sound relative to the room/environment the reverb is trying to re-create, it is only possible currently to create a very rough approximation and even that is only possible in stereo not in 5.1 and certainly not in Dolby Atmos. Creating believable spaces and aural POVs in theatrical sound is currently achieved by critical listening, plus a combination of tools/techniques, experience and judgement. In short, we're a long way away from even understanding how hearing perception works, let alone developing the technology to fool it to the degree you are suggesting.
Undesirable: There are two related issues here: 1. Sound Design in general; as I've stated many times before and detailed in "The Principles of Sound Design" thread, sound design is not about recreating an accurate actual aural reality, it's all about audience manipulation. To manipulate an audience, certain aspects of the sound design have to be very close to actual reality but other aspects don't. In practice, the complete sound mix of every commercial film is highly unrealistic, although when heard in conjunction with the visuals, is still believable. A common example of this is what is called hyper-reality, making a sound (usually Foley) louder in the mix than it would be in reality, to draw the audience's attention to what would otherwise be an insignificant visual action. 2. Aural POV: Interestingly, aural POV is one of the areas of sound design least well understood/appreciated by no/lo budget filmmakers and is commonly completely ignored, even though it's been an integral part of commercial/professional filmmaking for over 6 decades. The boom and lav mics are to an extent fixed in position, a few inches (say 4 for a lav and 20 for a boom) in front of the actor's mouth, if the actor moves, so does the mic. But, is that position the same aural perspective or POV of our audience? Additionally, there is usually at least two and sometimes many different types of shot and angles used in each scene. If we were to change the aural perspective of the entire sound mix in line with these visual changes we would loose continuity and disorient our audience. However, many edits (within a scene) may require at least some changes in aural perspective otherwise they will no longer sound believable. For example, the aural POV of the dialogue and/or Foley may change while the atmos remains unchanged. Furthermore, there are some types of scenes/sequences where the aural POV maybe set-up by but is otherwise not directly related to the visual POV.
Advancements in film technology have always been to either improve workflow efficiency and/or to increase the artistic options of filmmakers to manipulate the audience and thereby enhance their cinematic experience. Additionally, in order to be adopted, any technical advance in one area of filmmaking cannot negatively impact the artistic options of another. VR isn't a practical theatrical technology in the foreseeable future and may never be.
G
