[SadisticSid]

I imagine all of us have, at some point while playing, noticed that there seems to be a finite number of sound channels FS2 allocates to in-game sounds - lasers, beams, flyby sounds and so on. It's most noticeable when a beam fires, then a flurry of other sounds occur and the beam sound suddenly goes quiet, despite the beam still firing. Secondly, and perhaps less important, is that sound volume is only calculated based on distance at the start of the sound file. Beams are again the easiest examples to demonstrate - when one fires outside the audible distance specified in sounds.tbl, but you move closer while it's firing, it remains noiseless.

Since the SCP is moving to OpenAL this seems the most appropriate time to ask for these two behaviours to be changed.

[DaBrain]

I've noticed this limitation too. The sound system is really outdated in this aspect.

IMO this is really important, because it's one of the weakest spots of FS2_open.

Even more important than doppler-effects and surround sound.

[FireCrack]

Yeah, i agree. Especialy noticable when a few fighters fly by you...

[SadisticSid]

It doesn't look like any people are interested in this despite the number of thread views. I'd like to see a coder comment on this, if only to tell me it's a pipedream.

[CaptJosh]

I have to say that the number of sound sources is pretty weak. Even Star Trek Armada II has more and it's only an RTS, not a space shooter/sim

[taylor]

The number of sources is more of a hardware limitation that anything else.  Some cards/drivers will only report 12 or less sources and the game has the manage between just those.  Depending on the mode in use OpenAL can do up to 512 (totally in software) under Windows I think, but that's different for different OSes.  OpenAL does not have to provide that many though so we can't rely on any particular number.

The real problem is the system used the manage what sounds get played.  It has various priority conditions and would prefer to stop an existing instance of a sound rather than create another one, even if that really is possible.  If it's not possible then of course it should stop the existing instance but that's not really what the code does now.  The OpenAL code is going to be a bit different since sources have to be shared between effects and music which isn't something that the DS code does.  A single repository of sound sources is used, up to 32 (the OpenAL magic number), and a better resource management system (I hope it's better anyway) will be used to handle everything.

[CaptJosh]

I think Armada II uses 32 sound sources if you tell it to. I'll have to dig out my copy and check.

[SadisticSid]

Okay, thanks for that - would dynamically changing volume come as part of that too?