BIG Flaw: 3D Sound
by Robert Blanchet Jr. · in Torque Game Engine · 07/15/2002 (9:22 pm) · 21 replies
Ok, well I'm starting this thread in the hopes that it will become the central place for all the programmers here to talk about the current audio system in Torque. There is a major flaw/oversight in the current audio system regarding 3D sounds. They simply don't work. By 3D sounds I mean spacial sounds such as hearing a bullet zip past you or hearing an explosion off in the distance.
The simple fact of the matter is, these things aren't possible in Torque even though the interfaces for them are already completed. As it stands right now, all sounds have no spacial differences between them other than if they are to the right or left of you (read: there is no depth/spacial clarity). This means that all sounds appear the same even though one explosion maybe 50 to 100 yards away from another.
I don't mean to sound crude, but I think a lot of the focus of development should be shifted towards getting the sound system to work right. I've spent the last two days trying to figure out why the sound I created for a projectile(for the water projectile fix found on the task list) wasn't following the projectile path only to realize the audio system just isn't capable of doing it yet, even though the function interfaces allow for setting spacial sound coordinates already.
Now, I'm very willing to help get the 3D sound working, but I am by no means knowledgable in sound engineering with respect to programming spacial audio effects. This is why I'm creating this thread. I believe if we can pool each others knowledge on this particular subject then we can come to better grips with understanding the audio system and how exactly to go about impliment 3D Spacial Audio Effects.
To begin, I have a hunch, a rather un-educated one I might add, that the first step to producing rather primitive spacial audio effects would be finding the distance from the players position(the listening position) to the position of the sound source(the emitter). With this distance we can then use some magical math formula to to determine the linear relationship between the volume of that sound source and the distance from the player.
This seems rather crude though, when you realize that for every 3D sound you'll have to find the distance from the listening position and the emitter position. This could add up to a rather hefty performance hit IMO. So is there a better way?
The simple fact of the matter is, these things aren't possible in Torque even though the interfaces for them are already completed. As it stands right now, all sounds have no spacial differences between them other than if they are to the right or left of you (read: there is no depth/spacial clarity). This means that all sounds appear the same even though one explosion maybe 50 to 100 yards away from another.
I don't mean to sound crude, but I think a lot of the focus of development should be shifted towards getting the sound system to work right. I've spent the last two days trying to figure out why the sound I created for a projectile(for the water projectile fix found on the task list) wasn't following the projectile path only to realize the audio system just isn't capable of doing it yet, even though the function interfaces allow for setting spacial sound coordinates already.
Now, I'm very willing to help get the 3D sound working, but I am by no means knowledgable in sound engineering with respect to programming spacial audio effects. This is why I'm creating this thread. I believe if we can pool each others knowledge on this particular subject then we can come to better grips with understanding the audio system and how exactly to go about impliment 3D Spacial Audio Effects.
To begin, I have a hunch, a rather un-educated one I might add, that the first step to producing rather primitive spacial audio effects would be finding the distance from the players position(the listening position) to the position of the sound source(the emitter). With this distance we can then use some magical math formula to to determine the linear relationship between the volume of that sound source and the distance from the player.
This seems rather crude though, when you realize that for every 3D sound you'll have to find the distance from the listening position and the emitter position. This could add up to a rather hefty performance hit IMO. So is there a better way?
Torque Owner Stefan Lundmark
I've even had random problems, it works once, but after a restart it does not.. on 3 of my computers at home and a few at work.
On the other hand, I've heard others say that it works perfectly for them.. so I really don't know what the problem is.