I recently bought a Sound Blaster X-Fi, and I am quite disappointed to see games that don't take advantage of these features. Primarily the hardware acceleration that sound cards offer and the high number of voices that become available with very little CPU overhead.
Why do I care so much about this?
Various things become possible with EAX features. If you have never heard EAX, you really don't know what you're missing. Things like occlusion and the various environmental effects can do a lot for the way we percieve our surroundings.
We all know about the basic environment effects, so I won't really touch on those. We've enjoyed Morphing, Panning, Reflecting, and Filtering since EAX 3.0. But EAX 5.0 has introduced some pretty cool features (aside from 128 Hardware voices).
EAX Voice: This allows the environment effects to be added to your voice when you speak. Think about it. When you talk, others hear you as they would if you were actually in that room. No more dry recording of your voice. Also, it supports 3D VOIP, this should also allow you to hear that person in the proper direction. This is an idea I wish they would have incorporated a long time ago.
EAX PurePath: This one isn't as "WOW" as the last, but it's worth noting. This allows the audio to come from the proper channel. In other words, sound comes from the right speakers instead of the game "guessing".
EAX FlexiFX: More simultatious effects possible
EAX MacroFX: This one actually surprised me. When I played the demo of this (which was on an updated Painkiller), I never quite noticed that sound never seemed to get that "close" to you. It panned across the right speakers, but it didn't quite give you the feeling that it barely missed. Turning this feature on in the demo actually made the stake sound like it barely missed my ear. Awesome feature.
And Finally Occlusion: Yes, it's been around for a while, but it's been upgraded to occlude the environment effects that went along with the direct audio. It's one another one of those things you probably didn't notice at first but will probably annoy you now that it's been mentioned.
Essentially what I'm getting at here is that we have all these features at our finger tips and many developers are not taking advantage of them. This isn't to say that you have to incorporate ALL of the features into the game, but I would love to see some of these in Red Orchestra (namely EAX Voice and MacroFX).
Anyways, that took forever to write... lemme know what you think.
Why do I care so much about this?
Various things become possible with EAX features. If you have never heard EAX, you really don't know what you're missing. Things like occlusion and the various environmental effects can do a lot for the way we percieve our surroundings.
We all know about the basic environment effects, so I won't really touch on those. We've enjoyed Morphing, Panning, Reflecting, and Filtering since EAX 3.0. But EAX 5.0 has introduced some pretty cool features (aside from 128 Hardware voices).
EAX Voice: This allows the environment effects to be added to your voice when you speak. Think about it. When you talk, others hear you as they would if you were actually in that room. No more dry recording of your voice. Also, it supports 3D VOIP, this should also allow you to hear that person in the proper direction. This is an idea I wish they would have incorporated a long time ago.
EAX PurePath: This one isn't as "WOW" as the last, but it's worth noting. This allows the audio to come from the proper channel. In other words, sound comes from the right speakers instead of the game "guessing".
EAX FlexiFX: More simultatious effects possible
EAX MacroFX: This one actually surprised me. When I played the demo of this (which was on an updated Painkiller), I never quite noticed that sound never seemed to get that "close" to you. It panned across the right speakers, but it didn't quite give you the feeling that it barely missed. Turning this feature on in the demo actually made the stake sound like it barely missed my ear. Awesome feature.
And Finally Occlusion: Yes, it's been around for a while, but it's been upgraded to occlude the environment effects that went along with the direct audio. It's one another one of those things you probably didn't notice at first but will probably annoy you now that it's been mentioned.
Essentially what I'm getting at here is that we have all these features at our finger tips and many developers are not taking advantage of them. This isn't to say that you have to incorporate ALL of the features into the game, but I would love to see some of these in Red Orchestra (namely EAX Voice and MacroFX).
Anyways, that took forever to write... lemme know what you think.
