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Trends
This has been a very interesting year for interactive audio. Several important ideas and technologies entered the marketplace, hardware acceleration is finally a reality for the PC, and all of the consoles are moving on to a new generation of hardware. To understand the big picture fully, it is not only important to look at where hardware and software platforms are going but also how easily content creators can take advantage of what is available. As such, look for sections throughout this article that offer comments from content creators and developers. As we move on into the "New Technologies" and "3D Audio" features, we will hear more from the providers of hardware, operating systems, and tools. One might find fault with what follows in this article in that it may seem very PC-centric. Although every attempt has been made to include and highlight all of the platforms and many of the developers who work on them, such a critique has some merit. The reasons for this focus are twofold. First, information on consoles, for the most part, is given out only under strict nondisclosure agreements. Unfortunately, more is known by the contributors than they could reveal in print. Second, the consoles have historically been closed platforms for audio, enabled by a single set of audio tools and drivers provided by the manufacturer. As a result, there is not too much thought-provoking or mission-critical information to divulge that is not already known in detail by those permitted to know. Still, there are recent trends that make even PC-centric information relevant to console developers. The Dreamcast, for example, may be used as a Windows CE device and can run DirectX components. While Sony will ship the Playstation 2 with a proprietary operating system, it is no secret that it is developing a middleware program in which third parties will supply tools and technology to developers, including audio engines and APIs to augment or replace Sony’s offerings. Both of these developments indicate that even console-only developers need to pay attention to what is happening in the PC space, because PC technologies might migrate over to the console world sooner rather than later. On a final note, while Apple remains the audio asset development platform of choice for many game developers, it is somewhat of a fringe platform for actual game playing. This article focuses rather tightly on tools, techniques, and technologies that are specific and unique to game platforms and interactive audio production and playback. Since there are many other excellent publications that cover linear audio production tools for the Mac, they will not be covered here. As far as the Mac as a game audio platform is concerned, the numerous people that were contacted at Apple to contribute to this article chose not to comment. Where We Are Every industry overview needs to have the "big chart." My big chart, Table 1, focuses on the emerging audio hardware platform profile across a selection of PCI sound cards, silicon solutions for PC motherboards, and game consoles. My selections of PC sound cards is in no way exhaustive, but rather a representative sampling of the featured cards from the most prominent vendors. (The term "featured" indicates that these are currently the higher-end offerings of their respective companies and that these products are receiving the biggest marketing push.) They are included because they will become dominant in the marketplace for the Q4 2000 titles as their prices drop and they become the mainstream and OEM products of choice. Based upon these data points, we can add some specific characteristics to our baseline ‘platform’ profile: • CD or DVD storage for audio. • Roughly 64 channels of hardware-accelerated mixing (shared between Wavetable and 3D audio). • Hardware-accelerated 3D audio (for PCs). • A move toward 4- and 5.1-channel surround sound (for PCs and new consoles in particular). ___________________________________________________ |
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Features
