ChucK Mosquitos

[wmonk]

Everybody hates mosquitos. They are noisy, irritating and keep you from sleep.
So I thought of doing some Chuck Mosquitos.



The first one lives in a 2 by 2 box, and the listener is in the middle of the box. The 'gain' of the mosquito depends on how far he is from the listener.
Next step is to add a kind of doppler-effect.

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20090526-mosquito003.ck
Description:	First mosquito in a 2 by 2 box.	Download
Filename:	20090526-mosquito003.ck
Filesize:	870 Bytes
Downloaded:	88 Time(s)

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[Inventor]

wmonk, that rocks! Now let's make the skeeter fly around in our heads with headphones on (as we discussed in the chatroom)! Attached is a spatial game, I forget how it works, but it uses delay lines to accomplish spatialization. A target flies around and you have to shoot it, I forget how. Let me look at the code and explain it in the next post...

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SpatialGame4.ck
Description:	Spatial Game ChucK Program	Download
Filename:	SpatialGame4.ck
Filesize:	3.01 KB
Downloaded:	79 Time(s)

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[Inventor]

oh yeah, the mouse left and right controls the aiming and the spacebar fires. Give it a try with headphones on, really good spatialization example...

[wmonk]

Here the new version with a little Doppler effect. A mosquito has normally a speed of 1 km/hour, so I had to scale the speed a little bit to have a better effect.

Thanks Inventor Will implement that next!

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20090526-mosquito004.ck
Description:		Download
Filename:	20090526-mosquito004.ck
Filesize:	2.06 KB
Downloaded:	61 Time(s)

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[wmonk]

The mosquito is now, with some help from Inventor, flying in stereo.

Changes:
1. The mosquito sets a new goal in ([-1,1],[-1,1]) as it reaches the goal.
2. You can hear the mosquito 'in space'

I removed the Doppler effect to implement the stereo effect. The mosquito is now flying linear. So he has a constant speed. Next step is to change the way he is flying, so it hasn't a constant speed, and then implementing Doppler again.

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20090528-mosquito005.ck
Description:		Download
Filename:	20090528-mosquito005.ck
Filesize:	2.93 KB
Downloaded:	64 Time(s)

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[Inventor]

Download! I'm most definitely going to feature your skeeter on tonight's ChucK show, wmonk! nice work. The skeeter is buzzing around inside my head! LOL!

Les

[wmonk]

Hi!

Had a party last night. My friends didn't like the mosquito, so they bought me a "mosquito buzzer". It's a device that produces a tone around 20kHz that should keep the mosquitos away.
Anyway, did some more work on the mosquito today. It now flies from A to B, with the highest speed in the middle. It's a bit compensated for the nearest point to the listener (speed is zero at the nearest point, so you don't hear 'clicks').

I would say: download the file and annoy yourself! (listen with headphones for double fun)

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20090529-mosquito008.ck
Description:		Download
Filename:	20090529-mosquito008.ck
Filesize:	6.28 KB
Downloaded:	74 Time(s)

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[wmonk]

Just for reference: how to track the path of a mosquito. It's explained in this paper for the Malaria Mosquito by researchers of the Wageningen Univeristy in the Netherlands. I don't think it's possible to do some more 'real' mosquito paths and time dependent velocity. I really would appreciate some thoughts on how to do this. Or do you have some more mosquito paths?
Meanwhile I'm thinking of what doing next. I did some field recordings of a bumblebees nest. Big difference between bumblebees and mosquitos is the way they live. So doing a bumblebees nest would be great I'm even thinking about some bumblebee songs. (Rimsky Korsakov comes in mind.)

The link:
http://www.noldus.com/mb2008/individual_papers/FPS_tracking_techniques/FPS_tracking_techniques_Spitzen.pdf

[Inventor]

wmonk, I would suggest switching to bumblebees as your friends might find them nicer than skeeters. Then, tell you what I would do, but this is just an idea for your percolator: I'd make a bee's nest in your head program.

It starts out with just one bee flying around in spiraling circles, not lines, inside the head with headphones. Then another bee flies in and eventually another and soon a whole swarm of like 10 bees all in realistic stereo buzzing about.

There are many directions you can go with this. make a keyboard command add or remove bees. Make the bee paths a function of the mouse. make a game where you shoot the bees (like my example game), complete with a small supply of smartbombs that kill all bees, like in Defender from the arcade days of the '80s.

Obviously my imagination runs amok and all of that is a lot of work, so i say the old stand-by: do what you like and have fun with it!

Les