Any plans for this? Or is it possible for find a driver for it?
I thought the Source engine supported surround sound? Or is this something different?
I don’t know if 3D is possible with surround, but I am talking about binaural (edit: 3D positional) sound using headphones and HRTF
The original half life had support for A3D, in my opinion the best sound i’ve ever heard in any game
Stereo sound is supported, and the game will play sounds in a 3D representation of the world based on where the player is and what direction they’re facing, (This is a standard thing with Source and most engines today) but to do true Binaural sound, you’d have to record every sound in the game that way, which requires specialized equipment to do properly. Then you’d have to get each voice actor that equipment, as well as the sound artist… Which given their positioning on the global scale, would be a logistical nightmare and much more trouble than it’s worth for the very few people who would have headphones both capable, and configured for, the sound.
So, the engine already has the closest thing you’re likely to find in any game built in, and pretty much as good as can get digitally, but actual Binaural isn’t going to happen.
I realize now that binaural refers to a specific recording technique, sorry for the confusion.
Anyone who remembers Aureal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A3D) would know what I am talking about.
The source engine comes with surround sound up to 7.1
Absolutely! (still have the card) It was one of the things that made HL an amazing experience at the time. I was SO upset when they were purchased the the tech was killed.
“A3D uses a subset of the actual in-game 3D world data to accurately model the location of both direct (A3Dspace) and reflected (A3Dverb) sound streams (A3D 2.0 can perform up to 60 first-order reflections). EAX 1.0, the competing technology at the time promoted by Creative Labs, simulated the environment with an adjustable reverb—it didn’t calculate any actual reflections off the 3D surfaces.”
“Creative then acquired Aureal’s assets in September 2000 through the bankruptcy court … Creative Labs has not chosen to support the A3D API.”
Reminds me of this old thing. It is kind of surprising more attention isn’t paid to getting nice audio simulation in games. I guess it doesn’t make for nice screenshots to market a game with…
Most gamers use crappy headsets and low quality speakers and don’t realize how much better most games sound with a high quality set of speakers or headphones with a decent sound card like a Xonar dg for 25$. That’s one of the reasons video game audio hasn’t progressed that much in the past 10 years.