3D Binaural OpenAL driver for gaming

[ryanara]

Hi everyone, new to the forums. I was surprised to see no mention of the Rapture3D OpenAL driver, it processes sounds from games into a binaural 3d signal for use with stereo headphones. It's really immersive and goes perfectly with 3D stereovision!
http://www.blueripplesound.com/

[cybereality]

Interesting. I wonder how many games actually support this.

[ryanara]

Any game with OpenAL support should work. Here's a good list http://connect.creativelabs.com/openal/ ... Games.aspx

[PatimPatam]

Wow this sounds really great, thanks for that! Didn't know about it and would love to try!

..But why does it seem developers have stopped supporting it? Like Doom 3 & Quake 4 but no Rage? Or Battlefield 2 but not Battlefield 3??

In any case I hope that with VR it makes a comeback, or at least something similar.. Also would be nice to know if Doom 3 BFG will support it or not!

[ryanara]

The effect is pretty awesome after choosing the right HRTF. There's youtube videos demonstrating it in UT2003!
I was under the impression OpenAL is the emerging audio API standard for game engines, that list may be outdated which could be why there's no mention of newer games? Though I couldn't find anything for the ones you mentioned!

[rhinosix]

Wow this sounds really great, thanks for that! Didn't know about it and would love to try!

..But why does it seem developers have stopped supporting it? Like Doom 3 & Quake 4 but no Rage? Or Battlefield 2 but not Battlefield 3??

In any case I hope that with VR it makes a comeback, or at least something similar.. Also would be nice to know if Doom 3 BFG will support it or not!

I'm not a programmer so I don't really know what I'm talking about, but from a quick search it seems OpenAL relies on OpenGL, so it will be compatible with any game using OpenGL - opposed to DirectX. So Rage, and any other game using OpenGL would be supported.

It seems that the Unity engine defaults to DirectX when publishing to Windows, but can be forced to use OpenGL, and automatically uses OpenGL when publishing to other platforms.

Here are a couple of interesting articles on OpenGL vs. DirectX:

http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/01/Why-you ... ot-DirectX

http://www.bluesnews.com/archives/carmack122396.html

This is taken from the "Disadvantages" section of the OpenAL Wikipedia article:

The single listener model in OpenAL is tailored to a single human user and is not fit for artificial intelligence or robotic simulations or multiple human participants as in collaborative musical performances[4]. In these case a multiple listener model is required. OpenAL also fails to take into account sound propagation delays (the Speed of sound is used for the Doppler effect only). The distance to a sound source only translates into an amplitude effect (attenuation) and not a delay. Hence OpenAL cannot be used for Time difference of arrival calculations unless you write that functionality yourself.

[PatimPatam]

I'm not a programmer so I don't really know what I'm talking about, but from a quick search it seems OpenAL relies on OpenGL, so it will be compatible with any game using OpenGL - opposed to DirectX. So Rage, and any other game using OpenGL would be supported.

OpenGL and OpenAL share some common roots but are completely separate. Rage for instance is OpenGL but unfortunately does not support OpenAL:
So OpenAL/EAX is officially dead? Can i stop buying sound card here on?

Also found this other thread which is probably more interesting, but unfortunately quite sad.. once again it seems like the case of the right way of doing things not winning over in the end:
So, what's Creative doing about OpenAL and the rise of software audio?



Maybe we VR geeks should start making pressure to revive proper HW accelerated 3d audio?

[rhinosix]

I'm not a programmer so I don't really know what I'm talking about, but from a quick search it seems OpenAL relies on OpenGL, so it will be compatible with any game using OpenGL - opposed to DirectX. So Rage, and any other game using OpenGL would be supported.

OpenGL and OpenAL share some common roots but are completely separate. Rage for instance is OpenGL but unfortunately does not support OpenAL:
So OpenAL/EAX is officially dead? Can i stop buying sound card here on?

Aha! Shows how much I know.
Thanks for the reeduction.

[WiredEarp]

@ rhinosix: that second link to Carmack talking about OpenGL is from 1996. I think we can safely assume that most of the points he makes are out of date. In fact, I believe he much more recently said that DX is better now.

Google had this as the first link on Carmack + OpenGL:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/john-C ... 12372.html

[PatimPatam]

Regarding OpenAL it's really frustrating because apparently it's all there to be used: the api, the drivers and the hardware.

If i understand correctly the community stopped developing openal further, creative stopped updating the drivers, microsoft decided 5.1/7.1 surround was good enough for everyone, and developers stopped bothering dealing with buggy drivers and low demand, and went the easy route..

After hearing a few examples of binaural audio i'm convinced this is as important as having stereo vision for immersion. I'm sure something like the oculus combined with this could bring VR to the next level.

Maybe someone with influence like Carmack or Palmer could start pulling some teeth to get this going again. Pretty please?!

[ryanara]

After hearing a few examples of binaural audio i'm convinced this is as important as having stereo vision for immersion. I'm sure something like the oculus combined with this could bring VR to the next level.

Maybe someone with influence like Carmack or Palmer could start pulling some teeth to get this going again. Pretty please?!

I wholeheartedly agree with what you're saying. As a musician and person with sound synesthesia, realistic 3d sound is even more important to me than stereo vision, motion tracking, accurate physics etc combined, and it's just so frustrating knowing this technology could have been perfected and widely implemented over a decade ago before Creative eradicated Aureal Semiconductor and their A3D technology to leave us with essentially flat 2D multichannel sound. It's time the powers that be got their acts together and sorted this out once and for all!