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[phubans]

Does anyone know if it's been used in games? I heard it was employed in the movie Irreversible to create a feeling of unease among the audience.

Anyways, I'm currently developing a game that's a dark, surreal, existential "mindfuck" game that should be unlike anything else out there. However, I'd like to use infrasound to create feelings of unease and disorientation. I don't really care about the consequences as long as no one is physically hurt; the goal of this game is to really screw with the player's head.

Can it be done? What kind of tech would I need? And would the player need to have special equipment to receive it?

[nikki]

i suspct your players need some real speakers. at least.

[Tycho Brahe]

I'm not sure it would, I built a VB application once that used the Console.Beep(x,y) command, which outputs a beep of length x and frequency y, and once it got below a certain frequency it just cut out. Also, above a certain frequency it went silent and the speakers started clicking.

It might work though, if you have VB.NET try it out, I may be misremembering it.

[edit]
I've just tried it and the lowest frequency you can use in vb is 37 hertz, however other audio packages might let you do lower ones.

[BorisTheBrave]

It's not a matter of API, it's a matter of speakers. Small speakers can move at the required frequency, but they don't have the size to produce sound with any appreciable volume. Unlike regular sound waves, you actually need quite a bit of energy in the wave before it has any effect you can discern. I got the impression for infra sound we are talking about meter wide pipes, rather than even very base speakers.

[nikki]

I've heard that the police is looking into infra-sound to use in riots, to make people sick/vomit/shit their pants... 

[Tycho Brahe]

It's not a matter of API, it's a matter of speakers. Small speakers can move at the required frequency, but they don't have the size to produce sound with any appreciable volume. Unlike regular sound waves, you actually need quite a bit of energy in the wave before it has any effect you can discern. I got the impression for infra sound we are talking about meter wide pipes, rather than even very base speakers.

Damn. I forgot about that, and i did a physics exam about waves a couple of days ago 

[phubans]

Hmm, so even if I found some wavs on that low-end frequency to loop in the background of my game, it's still highly unlikely that the sound would ever even be produced on speakers? What about headphones? I was going to recommend the game is played with them, anyways.

[nikki]

from wikipedia:

Infrasound is sound that is lower in frequency than 20 Hz (Hertz) or cycles per second, the normal limit of human hearing.

Headphones may be used to prevent other people from hearing the sound either for privacy or to prevent disturbance, as in listening in a public library. They can also provide a level of sound fidelity greater than loudspeakers of similar cost. Part of their ability to do so comes from the lack of any need to perform room correction treatments with headphones. High quality headphones can have an extremely flat low-frequency response down to 20 Hz within 3dB. However, rated frequency response distortion figures do not provide information on what character the sound reproduced at that frequency will be. Marketed claims such as 'frequency response 4 Hz to 20 kHz' are usually overstatements; the product's response at frequencies lower than 20 Hz is typically very small. [3]

[Tycho Brahe]

Mabye consider using ultra high frequency sound then? its pretty uncomfortable as well...

[curby]

I've heard that the police is looking into infra-sound to use in riots, to make people sick/vomit/shit their pants... 

not infrasound, but still pretty brutal:

[Rob Lach]

Make a sound ~19hz and you'll hit the resonant frequency of the eye. Makes people see ghost images.

[phubans]

I've heard that the police is looking into infra-sound to use in riots, to make people sick/vomit/shit their pants...  

not infrasound, but still pretty brutal:

Man that's !@$!ing disgusting! The Orwellian police state we're slipping into is both sad and scary  

Make a sound ~19hz and you'll hit the resonant frequency of the eye. Makes people see ghost images.

YES! This sounds awesome. What kind of software would I use to do this?

EDIT: I found this tone generator: http://www.world-voices.com/software/nchtone.html and played around with it for a bit just now, trying the 19hz freq on different wave types, listening with and without headphones. I don't know if it's a psychological placebo or not, but I did start to feel anxious after hearing the sounds. This just might work! Thanks for the help.

[PGGB]

As said before consumer-class speakers will never get you that low.
You would really need some serious expensive sound monitors, and you can hardly rely on that for your game.

On the other hand, you might just scare the shit out of the single person that plays indie games in his studio. 

[Rob Lach]

Yah. <= 20hz will be quite rare. Even my everyday use grados are rated 20 and above.