[Openal] Some frustrations with openAL sample code

[Scott Mayo]

And even with software mixing, Microsoft made it a royal pain to even detect 
> 4+ speaker output capability. DSound's GetSpeakerConfig apparently always 
> returns stereo output, regardless of the speaker setup selected. The only
> way 
> to detect a 4+ speaker setup is to use some new convoluted COM mess.

Not being much of a Microsoft fan, I feel your pain. The bottom line is,
though,
it's openAL's job to handle this, even if it takes COM calls. I sympathize,
I really do.
But Vista's been out for over a year now, and it seems to me that if openAL
is a serious
offering, there's been time to get it to work with Vista. And that doesn't
seem
to have happened. And that's just plain frightening.


The Generic Software device is currently only limitted to stereo output. 
> Although I think I heard Dan say that they may add surround sound, but I 
> don't know of anything concrete. OpenAL Soft can do 4, 5.1, and 7.1
> mixing, 
> however because of Vista's screwed up speaker detection, it can't tell
> that 
> it can output to that. You can, however, hack the source to fool it into 
> thinking there's a different speaker config (check Alc/dsound.c in the 
> function DSoundOpenPlayback for the call to GetSpeakerConfig).
> 

Not to be a PITA, but I'm new here. Is OpenAL Soft different than the 
Generic Software interface? I suppose it must be if one handles 5.1 and one
doesn't, but I don't get the difference. Also, I grabbed the source from 
http://www.openal.org/openal_webstf/downloads/openal-0.0.8.tar.gz
and it doesn't have the function you mentioned - or any way to build
under Windows. 

Wait, I see there's a different link for the source, if I'm willing to
install
Subversion. Before I clutter up my machine with more tools, will doing
that give me the right sources? Will there be a .sln file so I can "just
build it", or am I embarking on a three month lifesuck effort?

Maybe I need to simplify my question. I don't have a Creative sound card,
but I'm willing to buy one if it does 7.1 and has a USB interface. If
I do this and stick it into my Vista laptop, can I write C++ code using
openAL
to do 2D sound, without having to fix and build openAL itself? If not, when 
is that functionality expected to be available? If there's no date, what are
my alternatives?


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