system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How do gaming headsets allow us to differentiate distance and location of noises, such as if footsteps are on the floor above or below you, or where and how far gunshots are coming from in a BR type game based on where you are standing and which way your camera is facing?
gpt
It's basically the same as how you do it normally.  We can work out where sounds are coming from based on tiny differences in timing and level of sounds arriving at the two ears.  There's also some filtering of sounds based on the shape of your ears and the position of the sound.  The underlying idea for virtual audio is that you reproduce those tiny differences in the ears using a bunch of computer calculations.

Really, it's not all that different from how VR headsets let you see in 3D.  You see in 3D because of the differences that your two eyes see.  In VR, the headset sends a slightly different picture to each eye to let you perceive depth etc.

It doesn't matter how the signals get to your eyes or ears, whether they are arriving naturally or via a screen/earphone.  The important thing is what the light/sound is like when it's *in* your eyes/ears.

Source: hearing scientist with a PhD in sound localisation :)

If you want to know more about how we work out where sounds are, I'll find a link to another thread :)