broadening of the range of expressive means in multimedia art. Perception of the new

forms of transmission of sound and image in their synthesis with interactive devices is

still poorly studied. Thus, there is a need to investigate the effect of new audiovisual

technologies on a viewer in order to develop artistic devices and enforce the effect of

a viewer’s immersion into the multimedia space. With the help of the virtual reality

headset Oculus Rift, observers watched an audiovisual scene with two different sound

variants. The visual range consisted of a 1-minute spherical video panorama depicting

several people at different space points. One of the people in the video talked to the

audience – his speech was the only sound source. With Oculus the observer had a visual 360-degree spherical field of view. In the first variant, the observer heard stereo sound which was not affected by the head posture. In the second embodiment, the sound varies depending on the position of the observer’s head. The comparison of estimates, given by the observers, helped to determine quantitatively that “interactive audio” in the second variant makes the realism of perceiving a scene viewed through Oculus 6.8 times higher.

Key words: interactive cinema, audio-visual interaction, video 360, video panorama,

interactivity, the future of cinematography.