positional audio

[dash9]

Hi, I was wondering, is there a way to have the sound in OpenArena "3D" when using headphones(!)? What I mean is when you hear a sound you can generally locate where it comes from (not only left/right, but also up/down or front/back), is there any part of OA's audio system which does this or could do this..? Any info appreciated!

[epicgoo]

doh it is 3d...

[kozlov]

I think he could mean holophony or something like that

[yasha]

I think he thinks (that we think?) that he would like to hear sounds from all sides (left-right, up-down, front-behind), but like f0rqu3 said it already is like that.

[damocles]

I remember there was some limited support for Aureal A3D back in the day, but it was removed in later patches (someone clue me in on this).

Someone could hack together a HRTF or something that mimics binaural recordings (two omnidirectional mics in either ear (or a styrofoam model) for later listening on [headphones?], not binaural beats), but there might not be much to work with right now.  (A2D is "vintage," OpenAL doesn't seem to provide much for HRTF, and FMOD isn't so nice for some Free projects.  There could be more (Intel RSX, absorbed into the Miles Sound System, never to be heard from again)...)

EAX probably doesn't cut it.


Also, I have a couple of Aureal Vortex 2 cards sitting in a box...

[dash9]

doh it is 3d...

I don't think we have the same understanding of "3d". When you use headphones to hear a normal stereo recording, you can only tell if the sound is coming from the left ear or the right ear. It's like when you would have no actual external ears, or a head, because when the sound coming from left goes round your head to the right ear, it's slightly changed, and slightly delayed. The way it is changed, by the shape of your right ear, allows your brain to tell whether it's coming from left-up or left-down or left-front, etc. What this means is that if you'd suddenly have a different set of external ears, you would not be able to exactly locate where the sound is coming from, until your brain adapts to them. This also means the precision can suffer, since the sound generation will be done for a "standard" set of external ears, and yours may be different, but still, I guess it's better than nothing.
For example, listen to the recording on this page. http://www.terzoorecchio.com/carta.html You can clearly hear when the sound is coming from above or from below.
As far as I can tell, this does not work in OpenArena. I'm not sure what OpenAl is capable of in this direction.

[epicgoo]

dunno what you mean. but I can tell the place of a player from footsteps. probably that is because I am awesome (unlikely)

[damocles]

http://www.terzoorecchio.com/carta.html

It seems to be a binaural recording; see previous post.

If you want HRTF like it was several years ago, OpenAL doesn't seem to provide any real support, beyond leaving it to the driver and hardware you're using (Generic Software, Generic Hardware, "native").  (This would likely mean using a real Creative Labs card on Windows -- OpenAL 1.1 + EAX on Linux seems to be long gone.)

There's been mailing list / IRC talk of adding HRTF to OpenAL, but not much has come of it (yet?).