With VR being aggressive pursued by major tech companies, why aren't we hearing anything about any developments in implementing real time binaural audio in-engine?
Is it really that hard?
>>54342856
It was already available in the 90's, games like Outcast had full 3D positional sound when used with a soundblaster card, and games as late as Mass Effect and Quake 4 still did as well.
With the demise of hardware audio, it pretty much dropped off since there was no middleware available for HRTF support and no one seemed to pick up on it either, and of course no developer would take it on themselves to program it in.
The Oculus SDK does have components for 3D audio, but it's calibrated specifically for use with the integrated headset.
Because only autistic people care about that.
>>54342856
>Is it really that hard?
Yes. You get somewhat acceptable HRTF sound with current technology, but there's simply no idea how to move beyond that.
A real room with your head in it is doing amazing work, computationally. The straight forward solution is to simulate a PDE in a model of the virtual room. You could separate the free propagation from the more complicated near field, but there is simply no satisfying implementation of such an algorithm as of yet. They all sound like a joke and are nowhere near as convincing as for example the visuals of VR are. All you can expect is some very vague approximation of the real deal.
we had this tech back in the 90s, it was called A3D. sounded fucking amazing. it was acquired by Creative, who then immediately shelved it, and then just patent trolled other companies with it
in my opinion, nobody have gotten close since then
>>54343248
have a video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oSlbyLAksM
>>54342856
Any VR game worth giving a shit about is going to have 3D audio in some form or another. It's not going to be ultra accurate though, just enough to tell where things are.
>>54343248
Which is a shame, because Creative's CMSS 3D was and still is the best general HRTF solution.
>>54343221
The biggest problem is that everyone's ears are different, and then what headphones are being used? Countless combinations that can all seriously impact sound.
>>54343248
>creative
>fucks up something good
every time
The 3d audio in FEAR was amazing.
Hard to nearly impossible.
The major crux: everyone receives audio positioning differently.
We can differentiate left and right based on the time delta between the sound reaching the right and the left ear. That's the same for everyone.
We differentiate the height and front/back distance through how the shape of our earlobes and auditory tunnels morph the sound. These properties are subtle in difference but unique to every human. That's why there is no way to make a one fits all solution.
There is a kickstarter for a headphone which scans your earlobe and adjusts the sound accordingly. It's not perfect but the closest you'll get to natural hearing.
>>54343270
not actually impressive at all.
It just uses line-of-sight, unlike how sound actually works. You can hear someone shout from around a corner just fine.
In the video, you turn the corner from a water fountain and the sound instantly goes silent, peek back at the water and it makes sound again.
Very garbage if that's what it is capable of.
>>54343980
doesn't use line of sight actually, uses the in-game geometry to calculate the reflections of the sound waves. if you look at 2:04 you can see an example: the helicopter noise dissapears from sight but you can still hear it going down the corridor, and you can hear it (slightly muffled) through the wall. you can even hear the doppler shift when it changes direction if you listen closely.
>>54342856
>Hrtf now is called binaural.
I guess any piece of software really is called an app
Because the Oculus and Vive are gimmicks and the only people who care are the ones who invested time and money and desperately want their investments to have value
>>54343270
Forgotten technology from the fucking 90s...
As always, Creative acquired them and did literally nothing with the technology, just like the original OpenAL.
Why are creative so shit? I've never hated a company other than creative in my life.
>>54342856
HRTF is already common in VR games now.
>>54343652
Why not just make a few profiles that work decently for different ear shapes?
>>54343383
Lolno, openal is still the best they came up and doesn't require proprietary bs or exclusive chips that only certain cards they own can reproduce.
Also the decline came because of windows who abandoned it in favor of xaudio. Hello there mister EEE.
Nowadays you can have decent hrtf in pratically anything, if you don't know this or how to use it, then you might want to consider going to other boards.
>>54343383
>The biggest problem is that everyone's ears are different, and then what headphones are being used? Countless combinations that can all seriously impact sound.
The problem is that everything is different all the time. To have somewhat realistic sound you need to constantly recalculate the room response, including your (individual) ears and body. Over speakers we are not particularly sensitive to these subtleties, but over headphones we are (i.e. when you are standing close to a wall the room response sounds very different to when you are standing in the middle of the room. You may not have perceived that consciously, but it's a very noticeable effect that is extremely difficult to replicate computationally). It's very easy to ruin the immersion with stuff like >>54343270. The basics may seem alright, but it's just so vague that there's absolutely no immersion at all. We didn't move on from that substantially.
Question
In the majority of games, differentiating left from right is easy. Differentiating what's in front and behind is often easy, however some games do this better than others. The problem is when something is above or bellow you. CS:GO for example is incapable of this. Whatever is above you sounds exactly as if it were bellow you - main example is the map nuke. Why is this so hard?
I think work is being done in this field, but it just hasn't been very high profile.
https://youtu.be/MQt1jtDBNK4
>>54344481
OpenAL wasn't made by creative, it was created by Loki. After going defunct and other shenanigans creative acquired it, made it proprietary and did absolutely nothing with it. Thankfuly there's an open source fork of the project called OpenAL Soft
>>54344549
Spatial hearing works using three parameters:
a) Amplitude
Sound that emerges from the left will sound louder in your left ear than in your right
b) Phase
Sound that emerges from the left will arrive earlier at your left ear than your right.
those two things basically can locate sources of sound on a "vertical" circle. It can be left from you in the horizontal plane or it you be behind or above you. To determine that piece of information your brain uses
c) Diffraction (wave-like effects)
Sound that emerges from the left will travel around your head and through your skull. When it finally arrives it will arrive from different paths with slight phase differences. Depending on the frequency they interfere constructively or destructively. The resulting frequency response is characteristic for the exact path the sound has travelled. ("Blauert bands")
a) and b) are very easy to simulate, that's why you L/R distinction is usually good. c) is hard, full of subtleties and up to you individual features (shape of your head, ears etc). So the performance will vary greatly regarding that. With current implementations of HRTF, it's basically luck.
You can record your own HRTF easily however, which is pretty fun.
>>54344549
snd_legacy_surround might be what you are looking for. Although I can tell you from experience that most source games have a terrible 3d audio as the sound comes mainly from the center speaker. I'm not sure about this but I suspect that cs:go probably has that command disabled.
This isn't just the engine fault, can depend on so many things that it's ridiculous but it's mainly software enabling it or disabling it.
W7 had this disabled, period. You had to install ALchemy to enable back 3d positional audio.
I can confirm that with w8 it is enabled back as long as you know your way around drivers and configuring games.
If I can have HRTF in pratically any game on my fucking asus xonar, there is no reason why anyone else shouldn't.
>>54344812
>I can confirm that with w8 it is enabled back as long as you know your way around drivers and configuring games.
>
>If I can have HRTF in pratically any game on my fucking asus xonar, there is no reason why anyone else shouldn't.
Can you explain further?
What did Windows 8 turn back on? What do I need to do? How did you get HRTF in any game? This is all very new to me.
>Make small pre-project for masters degree about immersion through game audio
>Find this thread on /g/ a few days later
Anyway, i have the impression that the industry is more focused on directional audio than on acoustics of the environment, i mean, with Dolby Atmos and all, but than again, in movies you can mix reverbs and others just like you want...
What are the latest audio developments when it comes to games?
I took a look at Alien: Isolation sounds, damn, that is a well made game, sound-wise.
AMD is putting their TruAudio into everything, and intel CPUs have a little audio DSP in them now too.
You can do an awful lot with them, it just seems like no developers are committed to taking the time to use them.
>>54344967
As long as it's all software based and I don't need to buy specific sound cards, it should definitely be used if it exists and everyone can have access to it
>>54344888
I don't have it in me for a thorough explanation about it, but before trying anything, search for unified drivers for your sound card, then try the following:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=230642515
Personally I would make these changes from the article:
Download and install the latest official OpenAL first
Use openal-soft-1.17.2 instead of the one on the article
Instead of usingDeviceName=OpenAL Softuse DeviceName=Hardware OpenAL This will only apply on unreal engine games IF you are messing with the correct *.ini and not the placeholders.
All of this is only noticeable with headphones obviously, and in my opinion well worth the time for setting up. You gain a new sense in the games and also gain immersion.
You might need some extra tweaks when using different game engines, nothing that google can't help you with after having the OpenAL set up properly.
>>54345271
well fuck me screwed the pooch in the formating of the post.
>>54345271
This is all software based, correct? Because I have a fiio e10k and this is not a normal sound card at all, let alone a gaming sound card. It doesn't even use drives - just plug and play
>>54345305
All software, can't guarantee it will work properly on an external card as it might apply this to the primary (onboard I assume) instead.
Give it a go, worse case scenario you wasted 10 minutes of your life.
>>54344426
>Creative Labs sued Aureal for patent infringement in March 1998, and Aureal countersued for patent infringement and deceptive trade practices. Aureal won the lawsuit brought by Creative in December 1999. However, the cost of the legal battle caused Aureal's investors to cease funding operations, forcing Aureal into bankruptcy. Creative then acquired Aureal's assets in September 2000 through the bankruptcy court with the specific provision that Creative Labs would be released from all claims of past infringement by Creative Labs upon Aureal's A3D technology. Creative Labs has not chosen to support the A3D API.
Don't you just love copyright law and the costs of legal defense?
>>54345362
I just don't understand why creative acquired all the good audio technology only to not do anything with them.
>>54345358
Couple of questions
1 - This only works with OpenAL games, right? Or is there a way to wrap openal around other APIs that other games use?
2 - When installing OpenAL do I move soft_oal.dll to the correct folder or do I need to rename it first to OpenAL32.dll?
3 - CSGO uses OpenAL?
>>54345379
Incompetence
Lack of direction
Development bloat
Poor overhead management
Spite
etc
>>54345358
>it might apply this to the primary (onboard I assume) instead.
It doesn't apply to the default playback device?
>>54345402
OpenAL capability is present in a lot of game engines, you are just adding the files and configurations so when the game calls for the sound API, OpenAL should be the new default.
Some games will need to have command lines added or changed to work properly.
for source engine the command should be "snd_legacy_surround 1" and as I mentioned before, I'm not entirely sure it's currently working for cs:go.
>>54345466
After doing all the shit in the article and the changes I mentioned, you'll know straight away if it is working. If it is not, try disabling the other playback devices and checking settings, both ingame and commands for the game.
>>54345585
>you are just adding the files and configurations so when the game calls for the sound API, OpenAL should be the new default.
The only files are OpenAL32.dll and alsoft.ini, correct?
I don't think I have any game to test this right now. Gonna give CSGO a shot
>>54344812
>W7 had this disabled, period. You had to install ALchemy to enable back 3d positional audio.
>I can confirm that with w8 it is enabled back as long as you know your way around drivers and configuring games.
Btw what did win 8 turn back on? Are you saying creative alchemy isn't necessary like it was in 7? I'm assuming 10 still has it on
>>54345402
AFAIK on windows, only game that actually uses OpenAL is Minecraft.
On Linux, CS:GO does support it, but it's a pain in the ass to set up, I spent an hour trying and said "fuk it", even though it's really cool, not really worth the pain imo.
>>54343248
Wrong, Creative tried to push 3D as far as they could with the limitations they had, it was Microsoft who killed 3D audio starting with Windows Vista.
>>54345796
If you installed both the last official openal from creative and the other build I mentioned afterwards (this bin file has batch files in it to automate the process if you want) it's just creating the ini and placing the dll in place.
I can't stress enough that you will likely need startup commands and changing in game sound settings.
>>54345829
Alchemy should only be necessary for w7, w8 has xaudio2 native support which includes positional audio unlike w7.
>>54345851
At least UE3 works perfectly with openal soft and hardware openal. The only source engine games I tried post xp do have hrtf but the sound comes mainly from the center, specifically dialogue or scripted shit.
>>54345585
Just tested out legacy surround
If I use headphone or 2 speakers there's no difference whatsoever. If I turn on 5.1 with legacy surround turned on the game only uses one channel. It's broken.
>>54346179
Ok, I'm installing cs:go to test this.
Also realized that I didn't answer your question in >>54345402 you should leave the filename as is.
Unless you have other games to test this, you can try using the *.bat files to make sure everything goes to place.
http://kcat.strangesoft.net/openal.html
>>54346337
Well this confirms that OpenAL is working at least
>>54346759
Just tested and it is working, can pinpoint steps and shooting somewhat accurately on a horizontal plane, didn't have many opportunities to test out vertical awareness.
The sound equalization is shit, but this is fault of the game itself. But you can definitively hear shit like:
Someone shooting a gun outside of a house to your right at some distance, the gun sounds are occluded, and bullet hits sounds are about right while hitting objects and you can notice the objects were being hit from the right to the left.
Tried with in game settings of headphones and 5.1 with and without snd_legacy
The difference that I noticed between headphones and 5.1 was mainly the volume, headphones gives louder sounds.
The difference between legacy or not was the overall sound mix.
For me I'd play this game with 5.1 and legacy for sound nuance (point out the fag and laugh)
The sound shouldn't be as you describe, could be because of being an external sound card? Don't you have onboard?
>>54346991
>The sound shouldn't be as you describe, could be because of being an external sound card? Don't you have onboard?
Everyone seems to be claiming that legacy surround either doesn't do anything in headphone more or downmixes everything to one channel.
>>54346991
http://gamebanana.com/tuts/11352
> Currently legacy sound is bugged. When you use "snd_legacy_surround 1" recent source engine games (L4D2, TF2, CSGO) use only one channel to output sound. Therefore this tutorial is broken. To verify it use "soundinfo" command in console. If it shows 6 channels (5.1) then it is correct. If shows just one then it is using legacy sound system.
>>54347172
>>54347224
My bad there, I was assuming that the legacy command was working with the autoexec file.
Used the console to confirm and yeah, the command is broken in 5.1 and in headphones gives about the same as normal 2.0.
I guess that the mentioned "overall sound mix" difference was more of a placebo on my behalf.
I swear the fucking audio of this game is so bad, if you have the chance try running an UE game, make sure you change the settings of the correct *.ini and hear for yourself.
>>54347758
>>54347224
>>54347172
maybe we can get this stuff to volvo so it can be fixed.
>>54348245
Valve won't do shit until they port the game to Source 2
>>54348258
they overhauled the hitboxes and animations so who knows?
>>54342856
It's too hard to mix binaural music. It's been explained on youtube I forget and I don't remember the link. Basically when you'll want to record all the band at the same time and without them messing up. That's why they mix in individual music and artists.
But if it's for a game audio. I think you could place studio monitor speakers inside a empty room and then play back important audio effects.
TL:DR music you cannot mix binaural accurately without fucking up. But video games are simples. So why don't they fucking make binaural vidya game audio effects?
>>54351702
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oSlbyLAksM
>ps. fuck you, creative, for probably being the reason true game positional audio has been dead since you killed aureal
>>54348245
>volvo
fuck off back to /r/pcmasterrace where you can praise le gaben XD you fucking tool
