[Openal-devel] Distance units

[Alexandre Mah]

On 19/03/2005, at 1:44 AM, pclare at sensaura.creative.com wrote:

> Air absorption is fine and can be expressed per unit distance although 
> this
> does preclude the use of standard reverb presets contained in headers 
> as is
> the current EAX/I3DL2 style.  It is arguable though that air absorption
> shouldn't be part of these presets although making that change would 
> cause
> problems for people migrating from DirectSound/EAX or the OpenAL EAX
> extensions to a new extension-less mechanism in OpenAL.

Something like the previous alPreset() suggestion would be able to 
handle all such presets transparently, regardless of what units you 
choose for OpenAL, and without introducing EAX units into core OpenAL.

The alPreset() suggestion is just an example of one of the many simple 
ways to handle presets without tying OpenAL units to EAX units (and 
breaking OpenAL's ability to integrate with OpenGL).

My opinion is that OpenAL units should be interchangeable with OpenGL 
units, and extensions like EAX should have a scaling factor (as part of 
the extension) if they need one.