|
|
 |
 |
 | | | | |
 |
|||
 |
||||||
          |
 |
 |
||||
|
3D Audio
In the past year, 3D audio has received plenty of hype and media coverage. But the question remains: Are game developers using the technology or is it just a bullet point on the sound card box? The response from developers to whom I spoke in the process of editing this article leads me to believe that 3D audio is picking up steam. When asked if they were supporting 3D audio in their titles,most PC game developers responded positively. SingleTrac’s Sandi Geary said she was definitely supporting 3D audio. "In our upcoming PC title, we are looking to support multiple 3D audio technologies. We will be exploiting Creative Labs’ solution as well as providing support for A3D. We are also entertaining the idea of supporting additional software solutions. On Outwars we used QSound only, and we are looking to expand our 3D support so more players can appreciate the benefits of 3D audio." Over at EA, Alistair Hirst is also a proponent of 3D audio. "We support DirectSound3D as much as possible. We also support Creative’s EAX. On the Playstation, we support real-time Dolby Surround Sound encoding," Hirst said. Raven’s Chia Chin Lee put it simply: "All future Raven Software games will most likely support 3D audio in one way or another." As to the benefits they believe 3D audio provides to the consumer, the responses were not unanimous. There seems to be some difference of opinion when it comes to how advantageous 3D audio is to game players. Sandi Geary feels that 3D audio is best used to enhance game-play cues. She said that SingleTrac tries to use 3D audio for two main purposes. The first is to provide game-play cues that are enhanced by 3D sound. These might include weapon fire coming from behind you or potential threats that can’t be seen. Geary thinks this is by far the most compelling reason to use 3D audio. The second purpose for using 3D audio is to place the player in an immersive 3D world — to help suspend disbelief. Geary says that to this end, her company tries to use 3D sound to place critical ambient sounds around the player. Alistair Hirst pointed out that 3D audio helps heighten the sense of realism in a game. "It is useful in communicating information about events going on in the game, such as on which side of you a police car is trying to pass," he said. Microsoft’s Matthew Lee Johnston explained that "traditional stereo has been used to localize a sound in the player’s forward visual field. What 3D audio adds is the ability to localize the sound behind the player, which is arguably way more important, since the sound is usually the only way to provide the player with feedback about what’s going on behind them. Some games use maps and have ‘rear view’ options, or even let you pan your visual field around to look, but using 3D audio to position an object behind the player is not only more immediate and instinctual, but it allows the player to focus simultaneously on the fore and aft perspective. This makes 3D gaming much more fun, and allows the designers to build a game-play environment that’s 360 degrees wide." And there were those who were less enthusiastic about 3D audio. Independent composer Kurt Harland declared simply, "I have always been and continue to be unimpressed not only with the state of 3D audio technology, but the concept of it in general. I do believe that the advent of left/right was a big advance. Games such as Descent and Doom benefited from this immensely. The attempt to add a sense of in-front/in-back and up/down is, I believe, impractical and relatively unimportant. "Currently, unless you have a perfectly placed surround sound system, the 3D aspects of sound are essentially lost. Even if systems were developed to make 3D sound more practical, I doubt it would be important enough to game play, and hence game players, to get consumers to spend money on the physical equipment necessary, such as speakers and/or headgear." Over at DMA Designs, Colin Anderson was also bearish about 3D audio, for different reasons. "Aureal, Creative Labs and Dolby are doing great things to advance 3D audio in interactive titles. All of these technologies are very good at the moment and will improve as hardware becomes faster. However, I can’t help thinking that 3D sound, in some respects, is a bit of a distraction from what we should really be trying to achieve. Manipulation of sounds in 3D is useful and can add a lot to an already good game, but I’d much rather our industry concentrate its efforts on fully exploiting stereo sound first, before we start to move on to multi-speaker sound. I believe there’s still a lot that can be done with stereo sound. It’s just that from a hardware manufacturer’s point of view, the technology to make 3D sound happen is much cheaper to produce than that needed to push stereo to its limits." ___________________________________________________ |
|
|
Features
