3d audio? (openAL)

[u-s-e-r]

So I'm wondering whether we will get support for 3D audio in the game at all?

I just dont feel like playing maps with buildings that have a lot of floors when you can never know where the sounds around you are coming from...

Actually it feels stupid to play any map with buildings that have 2 or more floors.

Auditory sense is a such an important sense in a game, and on the real battlefield, and this games supposed to be realistic...

This is my only real big gripe with this game anymore, it just feels out of place, having the only other sense you can have in a game crippled in such a way... Theres of course other bugs/problems with the sound in-game as well, but the biggest single thing is the 2d audio. Its just a shame...

And theres still a sound blaster card in the recommended system requirements, implying the game has OpenAL support.

Oh, and I almost forgot, have the performance issues with the current audio engine been fixed already?

 

[Proud_God]

Agreed, and I know alot of other players agree as well.

 

[ross]

The audio definitely needs an overhaul.

 

[Raneman]

Welp, it's clear we want 3D audio. Tripwire says it's impossible on the Unreal engine, but look at Resistance and Liberation: They coded it into the source engine, but the source engine has a very primitive voice chat system and yet they managed to do anyway.

Why can't TWI?

Basically, all you need to do is (pseudocode)

If (target is right): Play more in right headphone
If (target is left): Play more in left headphone
If (target is far): Play quieter
If (target is near): Play louder

That's basically all you need to do.

 

[PermenentMarker]

I am sure it's got to be more complicated than that...
Also, I am pretty sure RO2 runs on Unreal 3.0 Engine.

 

[Raneman]

That would be a basic way to do 3D audio, all 3D audio really does is adjust the volume in each headphone to give a sense of 3D-ness.

So, if something's far and to the right, you hear a quiet sound in your right ear, for example.

If something is close and directly in front of you, you hear a sound equally in each ear at full volume, etc.

Also, that was a typo, I was trying to point out if it runs on Unreal 3.0, and people can do it on source, then you can definitely do it in unreal 3.0

 

[Xendance]

Welp, it's clear we want 3D audio. Tripwire says it's impossible on the Unreal engine, but look at Resistance and Liberation: They coded it into the source engine, but the source engine has a very primitive voice chat system and yet they managed to do anyway.

Why can't TWI?

Basically, all you need to do is (pseudocode)

If (target is right): Play more in right headphone
If (target is left): Play more in left headphone
If (target is far): Play quieter
If (target is near): Play louder

That's basically all you need to do.

...it does all that already. Otherwise your sounds would play in mono at full volume.

 

[Raneman]

That's what voice chat does already (mono, full volume), this thread is specifically about 3D audio, which we have, so it's about voice chat I guess.

 

[RAF_Pstyle]

Basically, all you need to do is (pseudocode)

If (target is right): Play more in right headphone
If (target is left): Play more in left headphone
If (target is far): Play quieter
If (target is near): Play louder

That's basically all you need to do.

Isn't this what we have now? I might be mistaken but it sure seems like that to me. My sound FX are definitely in stereo. And distance to source modifies volume.

True 3d sound would encompass the above in addition to directional attenuation, reflection and structure/ground transmission. In addition angle-to-ear would influence hearing to various degree, it's not just Right-Right, Left-Left. A sound located at 10 degrees right of front is more right-sided orientating than 10 degrees right of rear, for example.

In a 3D environment a loud, but distant sound overhead from the left will sound like it's coming from the right, if you have your right ear near to a hard/ reflective surface...

That's a lot of coding.

 

[Cwivey]

Big question, how would you work the volumes for sounds above and below the player using a stereo set-up?

The game already does the Left / right / front / back / far / close very well in my opinion. It's the uppy downy thats the hardest to notice.

 

[Raneman]

That's a problem I don't know the answer to, yet it still involves the same basic concept. It's all about seperate volumes for each headphone. It's possible, and I've seen it done though.

 

[RAF_Pstyle]

That's what voice chat does already (mono, full volume), this thread is specifically about 3D audio, which we have, so it's about voice chat I guess.

Not sure subjecting the in-game voice chat to 3d audio rules would be the best step. The decreasing audibility (i.e. stereophonics and attenuation over distance) would drive more people to using a third party voip like TS3.

 

[RAF_Pstyle]

Big question, how would you work the volumes for sounds above and below the player using a stereo set-up?

The game already does the Left / right / front / back / far / close very well in my opinion. It's the uppy downy thats the hardest to notice.

Up/ down is done with combinations of left-right. Listen to this with headphones to see how: Virtual Barber Shop (Audio...use headphones, close ur eyes) - YouTube

 

[Xendance]

Up/ down is done with combinations of left-right. Listen to this with headphones to see how: Virtual Barber Shop (Audio...use headphones, close ur eyes) - YouTube

Actually it's done with the shape of the ear. A combination of left and right is what we now have in the game

 

[Holy.Death]

Problem is not in 3D audio we have in game (save for footstep sounds and a few such bugs) that'll probably be looked into in the future), but with the lack of 3D audio for our VOIP system - making teamwork sometimes very problematic to coordinate and less climatic that it could be.

 

[Mike_Nomad]

Problem is not in 3D audio we have in game (save for footstep sounds and a few such bugs) that'll probably be looked into in the future), but with the lack of 3D audio for our VOIP system - making teamwork sometimes very problematic to coordinate and less climatic that it could be.

Truth is, DirectX Audio... is the basic weakness. We need to be able to CHOOSE which Audio environment we wish to use. DirectX, Hardware Drivers (Creative Drivers) or OpenAL.

Clearly, for Creative Sound Card owners; SB, Audigy and Fatality, DirectX Audio is a poor choice. Why have such elaborate cards if you cannot put their enviable features to good use?

I would like to be able to choose. Realtek, etc., using DirectX Audio cannot approach the quality of Creative Sound cards. Even Sound Blaster live is better.

 

[SQBsam]

Three systems give full 3d sound, they are

• Stereo volume: This is the obvious one, sounds on the right are louder in the right ear than in the left.
• Sound delay: This is very rarely found, my creative sound card can attempt to simulat this, which works well with music, but of course it is innacurate in games. Sound coming from the right hits the right ear first. This is actually very important for the brain, changing the timing of sounds can hugely affect the brain's perception of location.
• Acoustics of the ear: Sounds coming from various directions hit the ear at different angles, as well as pass around the head. Sounds from the right lose their treble for the left ear, as the head blocks it. Sounds from in front or behind sound very different (more treble from the front, more bass from the back), and the unique shape of the ear lobe gives other small variances to sounds as they come from different directions.

This is very hard to simulate, a sounds system that accurately runs through all of these points would be very resource intensive.



So for those of you saying "Just make sounds from the right louder in the right ear and quieter as they get further away," We already have that. I would love it if TWI simulated sound 100%, but the time it would take to create a system that properly simulates sound... it's hardly worth it.

 

[u-s-e-r]

Truth is, DirectX Audio... is the basic weakness. We need to be able to CHOOSE which Audio environment we wish to use. DirectX, Hardware Drivers (Creative Drivers) or OpenAL.

Clearly, for Creative Sound Card owners; SB, Audigy and Fatality, DirectX Audio is a poor choice. Why have such elaborate cards if you cannot put their enviable features to good use?

I would like to be able to choose. Realtek, etc., using DirectX Audio cannot approach the quality of Creative Sound cards. Even Sound Blaster live is better.

All players, whether they have a dedicated sound card or not, would benefit of this. The ones with a separate sound card would just get an extra performance boost.

If you look (or listen) at ROOST which has openal, the audio in the game is lightyears ahead, for players with and without a dedicated sound card. Not to mention that that is a very old and deprecated version of openal

Problem is not in 3D audio we have in game (save for footstep sounds and a few such bugs) that'll probably be looked into in the future), but with the lack of 3D audio for our VOIP system - making teamwork sometimes very problematic to coordinate and less climatic that it could be.

There is no 3D audio in the game, its just 2d, thats the problem I was talking about, you do not know whether sounds come from above or below you

I am sure it's got to be more complicated than that...
Also, I am pretty sure RO2 runs on Unreal 3.0 Engine.

And Unreal Tournament 3 uses OpenAL and has 3d audio, theres support for it in-engine already. It was just a poor choice not to use it, but instead an engine developed for consoles.

 

[u-s-e-r]

So for those of you saying "Just make sounds from the right louder in the right ear and quieter as they get further away," We already have that. I would love it if TWI simulated sound 100%, but the time it would take to create a system that properly simulates sound... it's hardly worth it.

Hardly worth it? This was normal stuff in PC games already in the 90s!

 

[Xendance]

Hardly worth it? This was normal stuff in PC games already in the 90s!

No, simulated binaural hearing wasn't in games in the 90's, and still isn't.