[Taristin]

Pretty Please?

[DaBrain]

Yeah, I'd like to see that in a future build.

Ogg is the best way for any mod that has custom music.
(at equal filesize,  better quality )

[Unidan]

Screw Ogg, vqf all the way. >XD

[Fineus]

Dammit! WAV! What's wrong with you, act like men!

(honestly, OGG would be nice).

[Taristin]

is vqf?  No. I refuse to search for it.

[Flaser]

If you have to search for a file/media format, then it's either too experimental/not widespread enough for SCP or you're a L4M3R who badly needs a fresh set of digital diapers.

I guess we all know under which category vqf falls.

[kasperl]

RTFM, damnit.

http://dynamic4.gamespy.com/~freespace/fsdoc/index.php/New%20File%20Formats

This thread is really bloody annoying to see, I do expect you guys to at lleast try and get some brains, and not barge in here demanding features.

[Taristin]

1. Calm down. Breathe. Think. Then post.

2. It's not a feature that has lisencing problems. It's free, is it not? And if it's a viable alternative to Wav, with better quality for equal the file size, how is it different than offering TGA or JPG support? Which use more resources?

3. If a thread annoys you. Leave it. Problem solved.

[kasperl]

Cursing when requesting a feature is hardly polite, now is it?

There are other issues. Effort is one, performance might be another. This is something to ask nicely, not to curse about when you want it.

[Taristin]

The title was more for humor than anything else. And I'll wait for an actual programmer to tell me no, than listen to you saying why it shouldn't be so. If we all listened to those who complained, we'd have nothing here, because TopAce doesn't think the effort is worth the gain.

[Unidan]

Yeah.. vqf is one of the digital audio formats that competed against mp3 and Ogg. It's liscensed by Yamaha I do believe, so it never got off the ground. I do have a small selection of Chinese pop recorded in vqf though. ^^;

[kasperl]

OK, but the cursing just hit me. Asking politely is generally a lot better.

[Taristin]

Appears I forgot the winky smily...

[Fineus]

It should've been obvious. Can you keep this on topic?

[Viper1000]

We want MIDI's!

[Moonsword]

*head hits table*

Calm down, people.

I'm pretty sure the threat title was a joke.

[WMCoolmon]

Funny thing is, there's actually files for MIDIs that I think were with the original source from :V:. They're absolutely empty.

There are two issues with adding OGG. Well, make that three.
1) Processing time. This would be a problem if you decoded them on-the-fly rather than extracting them on mission start.

2) Memory requirements. In FS2 right now, it's setup to use files loaded into memory that are in PCM format. A 2 minute file will take up roughly 22 MB at 48000hz/16-bit/stereo (CD Quality). In a 128kbps OGG, it would be 1.64 MB. This means a soundtrack would take up 50 MB or more when loaded into memory, if you were using higher-quality OGGs.

3) Coding overhead. At the very least, you'd have to write a conversion function for loading OGGs. If you wanted to minimize memory use to the same size as the loaded OGG, you'd have to write load/play/stop/ff/rewind/etc functions and more for OGGs (This would take somewhat more processing power).


I think the big hold-up right now is lack of anyone with sound experience..

[Bri_Dog]

Real Audio all the way!!!!!!

[Flaser]

Just a minor note: OGG is not a substitute for WAV (which is a container format like AVI IIRC) but ADPCM (WMCoolmon, could you explain the difference between ADPCM and PCM, AFAIK the first is a MS format, while the later is not...but that's all I know about it).

However I don't understand why OGG would take more memory - it was supposed to be more efficient at compressing than PCM.

BTW if OGG support gets implemented VBR decoding should be a prime target, since anything VBR can be tons better than a CBR encoded file both quality and size wise, unless you set the bitrate (and quality) to ridiculously low levels.

About the processing part: IMHO you're right, but compared to other tasks (especially since the GPU handles nowadays quite a big portion of the load) it could be neligable.

Supporting the format would be beneficial for campaign distributions since the Voice Over could be a lot smaller, and the music higher quality.

[WMCoolmon]

ADPCM is basically compressed PCM. From what I've seen it's not as good as OGG or MP3 at all, it was used in Inferno and as a result the music was noticeably distorted.

OGG would only take up less memory than a wav if it was decoded at play-time (Which would take up more processing power). It'd be harder to code though because you'd have to re-do all the wav playing functions.
However, if play-time OGG were implemented it would be easy to add an OGG player into the FS2, possibly even add a HUD gauge for it.

Load-time OGG would be far more likely, which would extract the files when a mission was loaded and put them into memory as WAV files. I'm not sure exactly how FS2 handles music, but if it loads it into memory when it needs to be played, you'd have to change the sound system to load music when the mission starts rather than on load.

If either OGG method was used, I think mission and campaign designers would started using higher quality sounds, which would take up more space. This is why I think OGG would take up more memory than wav files if it was implemented.