Author Topic: Virtual Surround  (Read 5222 times)

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Offline Zarax

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Hello everybody, long time since my last post here.
I'm enjoying the latest developments, although I have a question:
If I remember correctly, the original FS2 release had some kind of virtual surround sound support and it worked pretty well.
Is it still there in SCP or am I just remembering wrong?

Thanks,
Zarax
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FSO uses OpenAL to handle all that stuff now, I think; so probably.
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Offline Zarax

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AFAIK OpenAl just managed true surround, IIRC it was SRS Labs'?
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Offline karajorma

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FS2 originally used EAX to provide surround sound. No idea if it still can do surround sound still though.
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Offline Zarax

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Karajorma, what I'm referring to is not EAX but the competing technology at the time also supported.
It allowed pseudo-surround sound with 2 speakers, just wondering if support is still there.
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Offline MatthTheGeek

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pseudo-surround sound with 2 speakers
Isn't that commonly called "stereo".
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Offline Zarax

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Retrieval_System

Not exactly, it's a technology that uses stereo to emulate surround, it was supported in retail.
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Offline Skarab

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That ability is built into a number of headphones, including the corsair vengeance 1500, which I currently use.  I don't know if FSO is coded to make use of the headphones ability or not, but the effect on 5.1 / 7.1 audio sources is pretty impressive.  Hard to believe it's only 2 speakers doing the work.

 

Offline Zarax

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Yes, that's why I'd like to see it back in SCP, especially as I don't have room for a proper 5.1 setup...
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Offline chief1983

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You're not the only one, from what I've read far more gamers have invested in quality headphones as opposed to > 2 speaker setups.
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Offline Fury

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Karajorma, what I'm referring to is not EAX but the competing technology at the time also supported.
It allowed pseudo-surround sound with 2 speakers, just wondering if support is still there.
Uh, sorry but FS2 never supported anything other than EAX and DirectSound. Competing technology to EAX would have been Aureal A3D which didn't succeed. At least I don't remember there having been anything related to SRS in FS2 retail.

However, technologies like SRS Headphone, TruSurround XT, TruBass, FOCUS, SRS Virtual Surround, Circle Surround, SRS Wow, Dialog Clarity, and VIP can be used if licensed. Naturally they expect money (lots of it) in exchange for a license. Even then you'd need to use externally linked libraries because I doubt you can bundle them within FSO executable due to incompatible licenses.

You would have to find free alternative that has license suitable to use with FSO. And that'd be OpenSL.
http://www.khronos.org/registry/sles/specs/OpenSL_ES_Specification_1.1.pdf

Unfortunately there is only one implementation of OpenSL, the ES (standing for Embedded Systems). So there is no equivalent for PC's like in the case of OpenGL vs OpenGL ES. Prominent video card drivers from AMD, NVIDIA and Intel do support OpenGL ES too (at least up to v2.0 iirc), but I have no idea whether PC audio drivers supports OpenSL ES.

And speaking of externally linked libraries, I wish SCP would use OpenAL Soft by default as they could bundle it within FSO executable. Thus removing the need to have Creative's OpenAL as prerequisite to run FSO with working audio.
« Last Edit: July 15, 2013, 12:43:46 pm by Fury »

 

Offline Kolgena

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Razer recently released some free software called Razer Surround that can downmix any 5.1 or 7.1 signal to emulated surround for stereo headphones. (You'll never get convincing surround from stereo speakers, so let's forget about that application). If FSO is outputting 5.1 or 7.1 sound, then Razer Surround will be able to give you pretty convincing (at least in my experience, and I'm extremely picky about all things audio) experience.

However, I don't think FSO outputs 5.1 or 7.1 properly right now, or at least, the surround effect from FSO is much crappier than any of the other games I have tested.

 

Offline Mongoose

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I never really saw the need for surround sound when it comes to gaming, since most games I can think of do a pretty good job of implementing directional sound anyway.

 

Offline Fury

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Quote
Starting with OpenAL Soft 1.14, HRTFs can be used to enable enhanced
spatialization for both 3D (mono) and multi-channel sources, when used with
headphones/stereo output. This can be enabled using the 'hrtf' config option.

For multi-channel sources this creates a virtual speaker effect, making it
sound as if speakers provide a discrete position for each channel around the
listener. For mono sources this provides much more versatility in the perceived
placement of sounds, making it seem as though they are coming from all around,
including above and below the listener, instead of just to the front, back, and
sides.

The built-in data set is based on the KEMAR HRTF diffuse data provided by MIT,
which can be found at <http://sound.media.mit.edu/resources/KEMAR.html>. It's
only available when using 44100hz playback.
Some reference links:
https://github.com/stephank/surreal/blob/master/Deps/openal-soft/hrtf.txt
http://cranialburnout.blogspot.fi/2012/08/openal-soft-demonstration-of-binaural.html

Razer recently released some free software called Razer Surround that can downmix any 5.1 or 7.1 signal to emulated surround for stereo headphones. (You'll never get convincing surround from stereo speakers, so let's forget about that application). If FSO is outputting 5.1 or 7.1 sound, then Razer Surround will be able to give you pretty convincing (at least in my experience, and I'm extremely picky about all things audio) experience.
This apparently uses HRTF similarly to OpenAL Soft from what I gathered by googling about it.
http://www.razerzone.com/surround
« Last Edit: July 16, 2013, 01:00:09 pm by Fury »