[Openal-devel] Broad soundscapes - repost

[Chris Robinson]

On Monday 10 November 2008 08:20:14 am you wrote:
> Part of the problem here is that the game is very big - as in a forest
> can be a couple of Km across, and getting a sound that sounds as broad
> as you can see seems difficult in openAL.

I think when going about it in a real-time game, you don't really need 
every "seeable" sound source to produce a sound. Just enough that it sounds 
like there's a bunch, and they appropriately start and stop based on 
distance/gain (so the ones most audible to the listener will always be the 
ones playing, regardless of where the listener is). The email I just sent to 
slytron on openal-devel has a somewhat simplistic source-management method 
that can help achieve that.

That, combined with a couple audio "tricks" (such as applying a slight reverb 
and using different sound buffers with some having pre-mixed (but still mono) 
effects) to make it sound like there's more sources, should be able to 
produce a very convincing real-time environment.


That's probably how I'd go about trying it, anyway. It may or may not work 
depending on the engine and types of environments, but the idea sounds 
reasonable to me.