Most developers that I know ignore sounds in their applications. Let's be honest: most applications do not need sounds. If you were working on the next great word processor, you would not think about using a ping sound every time the user presses the Enter key. That would get quite tedious and tiring pretty soon.

However, we are not writing a word processor. We are writing immersive software--software that mimics the real world. In the real world, everything we do is accompanied by sound, so we should do the same.

Sounds can be very powerful. They can give a sense of realism to the virtual world we are building. Not only that, they also can act as part of the user interface. We can use sounds to give the user information about what is going on in our virtual world.

Holograms we draw in our apps are only visible when the user looks at them. Since the field of view can be somewhat limiting, it is not always obvious where the user should look to find things...