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Outerra Tech Demo download. Help with graphics driver issues

Author Topic: Sounds in Outerra  (Read 7203 times)

viggo

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Sounds in Outerra
« on: November 13, 2010, 05:51:28 am »

Hello all!
I have followed this project as a quiet listener for a while now and are really impressed about what i have been seeing so far!

I have a question..
How will the sounds in the engine bee handled? Will they bee 'only' a .wav-file played, or will it actually bee vibrations, generated where the sound is created, and then go through the air to the player?

As I have no clue in programming i dont know if it is possible at all, but i think it would be quite cool if the sounds you hear are generatet there and then, and would differ if you use another set of tires, shoot in an open space (dessert etc) or down in a valley with eckos and stuff! :D

And then without mention another player, that just hear throug the ground that something _big_ has exploded far, far away..

If you manage to get the fysics right for the 'atomic vibration' that would require, then, i guess, the step to make e.g an radar would bee quite simple, since it also uses vibrations as signals, and you could in-game build a radio out of electrical components you find and it works, depending on the quality of the electrical components, and yor skills assembling it :P

would it bee possible?

Victor
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cameni

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Sounds in Outerra
« Reply #1 on: November 13, 2010, 07:10:50 am »

It should be done using a 3D audio library such as OpenAL, where you can have multiple moving sound sources and a single listener. It computes attenuation and Doppler and other effects. However, these sound sources use wav files as input. Computing vibrations from movement (and wind, etc) would be way too expensive and the compromises it would require would make the final result actually worse. Using the pre-recorded sounds for events is perfectly OK.

Things like echoes have to be simulated outside, because the library cannot account for global topology. Not sure how this will be done, but the easiest thing would be to have various environment classes assigned to terrain at a coarse level and use these according to player's position.

A wave propagation simulation could be used for sound and radio both, but with different parameters and properties. While this could be an interesting topic for some scientific simulation, I think games would get along with simple distance attenuation, maybe again complemented by using environment specific coefficients.
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