For my honours project, I focused on developing an innovative system that uses audio as the primary method of navigation, challenging the conventional reliance on visual cues. The objective was to explore how sound could guide users through a level by creating a more immersive and accessible experience, especially for players with visual impairments. To achieve this, I designed and built a custom VR framework that was deployed onto PS5 development kits. This allowed me to leverage the advanced Audio Reflections and Tempest systems, which simulate accurate sound refractions and acoustics within a 3D space.

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The use of these audio systems was critical to the project’s success, as they enabled sound to behave realistically, bouncing around the environment in ways that allowed players to follow it to each objective. By simulating audio cues with precise spatial awareness, I aimed to create an experience where players could rely solely on sound for navigation, offering a unique gameplay dynamic.

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One of the major technical challenges was successfully deploying my VR framework to the PS5 devkits. This required careful configuration and integration of several additional plugins to fully utilize the hardware’s capabilities. Ensuring that Unreal Engine could recognize and communicate with the devkits was crucial to the project's progress. Once the PC was connected to the devkits, the process involved configuring Unreal to identify the development kit as a deployable platform. After that, it was a matter of setting up the framework and deploying the project seamlessly to test and refine the system.