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News: March 8 - 14, 1999
Remember
to Enter the Survey Its not to late to be heard by Aureal. Let them know what about reverb is important to you and get a chance to win some Sennheiser headphones. Hyperblade IAS
demo Aureal A3D Central reports that Extreme Audio Reality (EAR) has posted an updated Hyperblade demo with IAS support. Saturday, March 13, 99 Daikatana
Deathmatch Demo Its out! Head over to 3Dfiles for your download of this 34 MB deathmatch demo. Note this demo is only playable on Mplayer.com. I am downloading right now and will post a 3D sound update but based on our post from March 7th I expect that the 3D sound implimentation will range from not there to alpha. Here again is the quote from Ion Storm: The demo won't, at least not in it's full glory. Mike has been busy with the DM demo and has not had the time to work on the sound. Now that we have completed the demo. He will begin work on sound again. The full game will feature A3D2, DS3D, EAX and maybe even EAX2.
UPDATE: (4:36pm) There are a number of variable in the config files relating to sound in the demo but as best as I can tell 3D audio and EAX while present in the config is not actually active. MX25 Information DiamondMM has posted information about the upcoming MX25 upgrade card for the MX300. Thanks to Aureal A3D Central for the pointer. ALive and
Kert's Page One reminder and one announcement. First the reminder. ALife is having access problems at their usual address so for the time being should be accessed at: http://web.singnet.com.sg/~cutemeow/alive.htm The announcement is Kert's Page now has its own URL. You can visit Kert at: http://kert.singnet.com.sg/
Friday, March 12, 99 MX300 Review Extreme Hardware posted a review of the Diamond Monster Sound MX300. In addition to the normal 3d sound testing, they have also done some in-depth performance/speed testing with the MX300. Here's a snip from the review: Diamond deserves credit for bundling Half-Life: Day One with the MonsterSound MX300, because Half-Life is one of the premier 3D audio titles on the market. Its implementation of A3D 2.0 is simply breathtaking. Every time that I play Half-Life on a Vortex 2 sound card, the quality of the 3D audio never ceases to amaze me. The plain positional 3D audio is excellent, even on two speakers. Furthermore, the reverberations and occlusions are detectable and help to give a unique feel to the different environments in Half-Life. If you can see (or hear, rather) a demo of Half-Life on the Monster Sound MX300, I definitely recommend it. Once you hear the 3D audio of the Vortex 2, you'll never want to go back to a plain old sound card(whether it is a first generation 3D sound card or not)." New Vortex 1
Drivers This in from David Gasior of Aureal: New Vortex 1 drivers went up today. Main changes seem to be: - changed code to hopefully prevent
screeching in A3D games after Riot
(Drakan) Engine Licensing This from Voodoo Extreme. Surreal Software's Riot Engine (used in the development of Drakan) is now available for licensing. From their new engine FAQ I cut the following on audio:
You can also find out a bunch more about the engine by reading our interview with Stuart Denman and Tim Ebling of Surreal 3DSoundSurge
Visits Sensaura Our own Simon King recently paid a visit to Sensaura's London office where he got a chance listen to all of their latest developments including their own upcoming four speaker system called MultiDrive. I can tell you he was very impressed. Check out his report to find out why.
Thursday, March 11, 99 High Heat Baseball 2000 Avault has made a 27 MB demo of High Heat Baseball 2000 available. Here's what they have to say about the game: The High Heat Baseball™ 2000 computer game brings in a whole new set of premiere features that pushes the limits of gameplay and lets the baseball fan take control of the perfect game. This year we have included everything baseball gamers wanted in High Heat Baseball 1999 and much more. On the field, High Heat Baseball 2000 delivers a "closest-to-the-plate" experience with high resolution 3D graphics, highly realistic running, fielding, management, and a true focus on batter/pitcher confrontation.The full game will feature EAX (and DS3D I assume) but I don't know if the demo already supports it. Another Dave Rossum interview AGNTV has a real video interview with Dave Rossum, you won't see Dave it's a phone interview. I only briefly looked at it but it contain some new info like a big announcement about EAX 2 will happen next week at GDC like we predicted a few weeks ago and he says people will be happy how quickly it will come out. He also mentions MS is working on getting midi to support 3D audio and that he thinks it will be available in the near future so I guess it will either be supported in DirectX7 or DirectX8, I would guess the latter. You can also win a SoundBlaster Live! card, an Encore DVD Kit, and the Desktop Theater if you listen to the show. Q&A with Creative at ALive Lee from ALive fired away a few questions to Kurt Heiden who is the Evangelist at Creative. The questions are about EAX and whether games supporting EAX do it well. One of the questions is if reverb tends to drown out positioning he says it doesn't do that more than in real-life. I think the problem in games is that it's usually stronger than in real life so it does drown out them more than in real life. I think that the reverb in current EAX games like Half-Life isn't nearly as interactive as in real life could have some affect too. It could of course be cool to have more reverb than what's realistic, hopefully more games will do like Shogo and Blood2 and let you choose between 3 different settings of how strong reverb you like. Dave Rossum interview part 2 ALive (notice the new temporary address) has now posted the second part of the interview with Creative's Chief Scientist. This time the topic is 3D sound, EAX and the SBLive. A few interesting parts about what to expect in future drivers, (the last 4 of this snip came from us in case you're interested) Will Creative implement HRTF routines on multiple speakers ( 4/6/8 ) in the near future? Yes. The upcoming driver enhancements available through the Live!Ware program will provide up/down discrimination and overall improved 3-D positional audio over headphones, two loudspeakers or multiple loudspeakers. These improvements involve binaural techniques (based on HRTFs) and other proprietary methods developed at the Tech Center. We will also make available in the near future some new driver enhancements to handle a wide variety of loudspeaker configurations involving up to 8 output channels. In a game using EAX the reverb is only affected by the environment within which the listener is located, not the sound source. Do you have any plans to change that in future releases? Actually, in EAX 1.0, the distance from the source to the listener is used to automatically adjust the intensity of the reverberation for each individual sound source. Without that, the reproduction would not be convincing for the more distant sounds. In EAX 2.0, there is a more sophisticated distance model, which also adjusts parameters of the initial reflections for each individual source. In the future, initial reflection parameters of each individual source will be more completely exposed to the programmer. Does EAX 2.0 have any other new features than the occlusion calls? In addition to the occlusion and obstruction properties (which are designed to simulate the effects of obstacles or room partitions standing between the source and the listener), EAX 2.0 contains several nifty enhancements. These include a more extensive control of room reverberation and reflection parameters (including room size), and an improved model for rendering distance effects. There're complaints that the activation between different EAX settings in games are too sudden, giving them an unnatural feel. Will there be an improvement in this area? This was one of my own biggest complaints in the early EAX games. This issue is addressed in the upcoming driver enhancements. Additionally, developers are becoming more skilled in working with the EAX API, and are starting to use some of the more advanced parameters to control the transitions between environments. With EAX 2.0 and its successors, these possibilities will be extended by the additional environmental parameters exposed in the API. DS3D models all sounds as point sources, that is the size of sound source don't matter. Do you have any plans to address that? This is certainly one of several problems with the DS3D model. We are working with Microsoft to resolve these issues, and we’re also working on how to implement the sonic effects. It is too early now to say when we will address this particular problem in released drivers, but we are not neglecting it. It will require extensions of the positional audio part of the API, which might be handled either in EAX or in DS3D. As you may know if you read our Sensaura article, Sensaura is also working on this. He of course brought up Aureal a few times: "..we believe that DS3D plus EAX2.0 is a superset of A3D2.0."The MX300 is a reasonable quality audio card that comes with some well constructed demos. However, the lack of real world titles that actually take advantage of the new features of A3D2.0 must be of growing concern to MX300 owners. I would also add that, in my opinion, the Vortex 2 demos that come with the card actually serve to prove Creative’s point that the sense of environment is not compelling when you don’t render the late reverberation tail, and the discrete reflections alone do little to create a convincing impression of distance and environmental awareness. If you read our interview with Toni from Aureal you know they are planning to add the reverb tail. Aureal has stated they will be supporting EAX. We're flattered, but thus far there's been no sign of them delivering on this promise. Keep in mind we would require them to provide samples for compatibility testing, and would expect them to comply with the necessary disclaimer requirements to recognize our technology, so I think it's unlikely we'll see EAX support from Aureal anytime soon. This bit was interesting will this mean EAX drivers could be delayed while Creative check them out? Aureal still plan to support EAX and if you want to give them some input on what you want from their EAX drivers and a chance to win a nice pair of headphones from Sennheizer you should go to the EAX Survey page. There was a lot of other interesting info in the interview even if you don't own a Live it's an interesting read. Shogo 2.2 Patch Out! Shogo v2.2 Patch FULL
VERSION: shogo_2214_full.zip - Monolith Shogo v2.2 Patch UPDATE
VERSION: shogo_2214_upgrade.zip - Monolith
Turtle
Beach Montego II Quadzilla This just in from Voyetra Turtle Beach: The forthcoming retail/gaming version of the Montego II will sport a new name - the Turtle Beach Montego II Quadzilla. Also, many of you have asked about the status of the Montego II Quadzilla and Home Studio versions. Plans to ship both products haven't changed. However, as you're well aware, Voyetra Turtle Beach is a stickler for quality control. With that in mind, we're taking the time to properly test and tweak the cards, as we want our customers to be completely satisfied when they purchase the product. I'll pass along an exact ship date when it becomes available. More DirectX7
info Now GameSpot UK has got their own DirectX7 article out of the door, it includes a bit more about sound especially about future plans than the article mentioned yesterday. Here's the juicy sound parts: Elsewhere in the API, as well as a new WDM driver model for DLS-supporting sound cards, there is a new Pan3D algorithm for 3D sound, and a new USB interface model. DirectMusic has gone a bit quiet - but that probably because developers are only just getting to terms with the interactive music algorithms made available in the recently released DirectX 6.1 The only new here (to me at least) is the Pan3D algorithm everything else was well known. So when will this be ready then: Microsoft hopes to formally announce the DirectX 7 specification at GDC in San Jose next week hope. Beta versions are due to surface in early April (minus the extensions in all probability), while the finished API is due for release in July Here's what they plan beyond DirecX7
If this is accurate I guess there won't be any reverb or occlusion (the latter never expected) supported in DirectX7. SB Live
and MX300 Reviews Another new site with two new reviews. WickedPC, which launched on March 1 has posted an MX300 review and now, a SB Live review. Interview
with Mark Rein about UT Game-Interviews has asked Mark Rein about what we can expect from Unreal Tournament, nothing about sound but still a good read. Here's how they kick it off: Can you describe the different modes of play? In Unreal Tournament? While there are 4 main game types. There’s obviously deathmatch. There’s assault, assault is objectives based and usually there’s a defensive objective and an offensive objective, for instance there’s one level everyone seems to like a lot called High Speed. You start off on a train and your objective is if your on offence is to stop the train and if your on defence obviously to prevent someone from stopping the train. The offensive team starts on a helicopter and jumps down onto the back of the train and tries to get to the front, fighting off the guys on the way. Then there’s Domination. Domination is basically several points dispersed around the map and what you do is to try and hold those points for as long as possible and prevent the other team from getting them. You get points for each second that your holding a domination point. And what’s the other one... Oh, of course, Capture the Flag. (Laughs) People generally know what Capture the Flag is. The cool thing about Unreal Tournament is you can play it with and against the bots. You can give orders to your guys and tell them to help you, cover your back, come with you, escort you, capture the flag, defend the flag or guard the base. Things like that. So it’s a lot of fun. Warzone
2100 3D sound news I spotted the following interesting bit over at Voodoo Extreme We are mastering and will be onstores the 26th. The game is looking extremely tight. The press in Europe is rabid for it. The average score for the game is 90. The multiplayer game has been balanced by our crack US QA team and Mike Mchale. The campaign offers a minimum of 30 hours of engrossing gameplay. Every C&C fan in the QA ranks is amazed by the story complexity. If you use typical RTS tactics, you will quickly lose. We 3DNOW! implemented for master. For the bonus feature update in April we plan A3D, EAX, new maps, weapons, and Keywords for our game - TRUE 3D and 2500 UNITS. So what's Warzone then, well this bit should give you a clue: Warzone: 2100 is a real time action and strategy game set on Earth in the 21st Century. The goal of the game is to rebuild North America and reclaim lost technologies. Battle to seize key areas, but be sure to protect your commanders. Key to the breakthrough nature of this product is its 3D engine. Utilizing the latest in full 3D environments, Warzone: 2100 allows full rotation, pitch and zoom control over the battle area. Heretic
II EP still buggy Activision's Steve Stringer reports that they still have some work do to before HereticII will feature A3D2 and EAX. Here's his plan update: Just to let everyone know, we're still
pounding on the EP. The code still has a few bugs, and we're doing our best to test the
game thoroughly before releasing it. Wages
of Sin and CTF update Thanks to Blue for catching the following plan update by Ritual's Scott Alden: * Shameless Plug * 3DsoundSurge
Half-Life Review We have posted what may be the last Half-Life review on the net. The focus is of course 3D sound but it's a complete review and a lot of cool screenshots. We have tested it with 4 soundcards MX300, Live, Original Monstersound and a soundcard using Trident's 4DWave-DX chip using QSound's Q3D. We gave scores for the following sound categories sound effects, ambient sound, 3D sound and implementation of EAX and Wavetracing (also known as A3D2) 3DsoundSurge
Price Guide Today is the launch of our price guide for speakers, soundcards and headphones. Its still in it preliminary stages and we would like your feeback on what we have done to date. Firing Squad
Face Off and Review Firing Squad has
posted an new edition of Face Off
discussing whether or not all of the "new, exciting technology" for games are
really that new or exciting anymore, and whether that very technology is a crutch for
designers to create substandard games. Aureal
SDK clarification I wasn't 100% accurate in my last post here's what Skip from Aureal had to say on how games using wavetracing will work on Vortex2 cards and other soundcards. Wavetracing refers to the geometry based
occlusions, reverb and reflections. Aureal SDK
pressrelease Aureal has now released the pressrelease about their new SDK2 which we already mentioned yesterday. Here's an interesting bit for all developers: The A3D 2.0 SDK is free to qualified developers and includes the following:
To receive an A3D 2.0 SDK, please contact Aureal's Developer Relations Manager, Skip McIlvaine, at skip@a3d.com or visit http://www.aureal.com/partners/pa_soft1.htm. It's good to know they get drivers and logos for free :-) The most interesting about this for gamers is that A3D2 games will now take advantage of all soundcards (only wavetracing on Vortex2 cards) so even owners of a DS3D card will probably (it's up to the developer to decide) get 3D sound with new A3D2 games and non-DS3D cards will get A2D. All this will make it easier for developers which is good news for Vortex2 and other A3D owners since that will mean more A3D2 games. PCWorks
FourPointSurround review Extreme Hardware just slapped up their thoughts on this system, here's a snip to give you a good idea how it performs: Despite the low wattage on the satellites
they are amazingly powerful for their size and can pump out their fair share of
"thumping" sound. It's definitely not going to wake up the neighbors, but in a
small room it may be all the sound that you need. There isn't an especially large amount
of air pumped out of the small subwoofer either, which is disappointing, but the To get a second opinion you can read Mark's review. Alien Vs
Predator preview A preview of this game that combines elements from the films "Alien" and "Predator" for a hard core game of survival. Choose one of three first-person gaming perspectives and experience a completely different 3D world of fright. Become the Alien and your arsenal includes a lethal set of claws, TWO lethal sets of jaws, a forceful tail, and unique wall-crawling abilities. The Predator, the ultimate hunter, is armed with wrist blades, a shoulder cannon, and other savage energy and projectile weapons. Choose to be the Colonial Marine and use your military training and heavy ordnance to stay alive. can be read at Gamespot. The game will support DS3D and EAX. You can download 3 demos of the game at Gamespot. No 3D
sound in Kingpin? According to a message the Kingpin fan site Gangland got the demo won't have any 3D sound and they still haven't decided about support for EAX and/or A3D yet. Earlier they said without 3D sound, Kingpin couldn't work. All action, speech and dress within the game is raw. So I guess at least the demo won't work then :-) 3-piece
speaker systems roundup Review Zone dropped us a mail mentioning they got their 3-piece speaker systems round up done. It includes the following sets: Altec Lansing ADA 305 FP2000
available in Hong Kong Lee at ALive got a message that you can now buy the Cambridge/Creative's 4.1 system for HK$1650 = US$212. He also mentions you could get a rebate of HK$350=$45 if you buy the SB Live Value too. A nice touch is that all Live users can connect the speakers to their digital DIN, finally a good use for that daughtercard. For more details head over to ALive. X-Wing
Alliance Gone Gold I got a note from Lucas Arts this morning indicating that the eagerly anticipated X-Wing Alliance has beenreleased for manufacturing and should hit the shelves on the week of March 22nd. The title is to support 3D audio out of the box. DirectX 7
Article Thanks to Jeff from Tech-Junkie for dropping us a line to tell of a DirectX 7 article over on Gamespot. Monday, March 8, 99 The week in Review We posted our The week in review where we as last week mention the most important events last week and what we think will happen this week. News from Aureal Aureal had a busy morning with the following announcements: New A3D Drivers are up on our web site: For those interested, the Aureal A3D 2.0 SDK has officially been released on our site: ftp://ftp.a3d.com/pub/Developers/A3D_SDK/A3DSDK2_0.exe and finally a pressrelease, here's a snip: Aureal Semiconductor Inc., leaders in
digital audio, and Flatland Online,Inc., 3D Web innovators, today announced a major
strategic alliance to deliver next generation tools to web page builders for the creation
of three-dimensional, immersive content. Flatland has incorporated Aureal's award-winning
A3DTM 2.0 positional audio standard as the exclusive audio
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UPDATE: (12:50am) I have installed the demo but canot
connect to Mplayer to test it. The sound options in the demo do not list 3D audio options.
However, the demo includes some files seen here that look suspiciously like A3D, DS3D, EAX
and RSX (Intel) support files. 
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2001 - 3D Sound Surge Please respect the copyrights of the articles and writers herein. All copyrights are enforced by 3DSS.