News: June 21 -  27, 1999

Sunday, June 27, 1999

Unreal Mission Pack in Stores - Mark @ 09:09 EST

I saw on Blue's News that the Unreal Mission pack, Return to Na Pali, is appearing on store shelve in the US.

Aureal Interview - Mark @ 09:04 EST

Combat Sim has posted an interview with Aureal's Develop Relations Manager, Skip McIlvaine. This is a very informative interview in terms of whats going on in the A3D/Vortex world and well worth the read. Just take the Creative/EAX comments with a grain of salt ;).
Note: As of when I post this I cannot connect to Combat Sim, but the posted link is correct.

Saturday, June 26, 1999

DeusEx Preview - Mark @ 21:06 EST

PC Paradox has posted a three page preview of ION Storm Austin's upcoming futuristic first-person role-playing game, Deus Ex. The preview includes a bunch of new information about this game, courtesy of game designer Harvey Smith. As this title is using the Unreal engine it will of course support DS3D with EAX and A3D 2.0.

Descent III Review - Mark @ 21:03 EST

3Dfiles has posted a review of Descent III and notes that the sound effects are great.

Outcast Patch - Mark @ 20:58 EST

This patch solves installation problems on Windows 98 Second Edition / 2000 / DirectX 7 for the DS3D with EAX supporting Outcast that is now avaialble in Europe. You can grab the 1.3 MB patch from 3Dfiles.

FOCUS elevation technology - Mark @ 11:16 EST

Today, SRS Labs announced that its patented sound elevation technology, FOCUS, has successfully penetrated the television market through the introduction of the BIGSLIM 52 Projection TV from SRS Licensee Hitachi. This is not on topic for PC audio but I though you might find it interesting to see some other uses for positional audio technology.

Outcast Available in Europe - Mark @ 10:32 EST

Outcast is now avaialble in Europe (and according to a post in newsgroup it will take some time before it comes to US). This title is on Creative's EAX list and according to posts on the newsgroup it take great advantage of 3D sound (no word about the EAX implementation).

IAS Updates - Mark @ 10:27 EST

Extreme Audio Reality has uploaded a new version of their IAS audio engine bringing it up to 1.58 as well as an updated version of the quake 2 IAS MOD and the Battlezone IAS MOD has been reposted after fixing a freeze problem caused by their 1.57a IAS upgrade to the audio engine. Thanks to Aureal A3D Central for the reminder.

Genesis 3D demo - Mark @ 10:19 EST

Genesis3D is a state of the art 3D graphics engine built for high performance real-time rendering. It offers advanced lighting features, 3D modeling support, seamless soft-skin polygonal characters, and many other innovations. Genesis3D provides the depth and versatility required to produce more than just great games. It is intended for many types of applications including education, business and the Internet.

Of couse we would not be mentioning it here if it did not support 3D audio and its feature list includes support for "3D sound positioning and attenuation".

They have also just released a demo called GDemo1. GDemo1 is the Genesis3D Technical Demonstration displaying all of the major engine features released with Genesis3D 1.0 SDK. You can grab the demo or the SDK from their download page or from 3Dfiles.

Warzone 2100 1.05 Patch - Mark @ 10:10 EST

Pumpkin Studios has released a version 1.05 patch for Warzone 2100. This is described as the "final patch" and it fixes quite a few bugs as well as adds some new features plus new maps. Lots of new Cyborgs in this one too! You can grab the 1.8 MB patch from 3Dfiles.

Friday, June 25, 1999

The Whole Experience - Mark @ 16:30 EST

3Drage has posted an interview with Patrick Moynihan of The Whole Experience about their upcoming first person shooter Experience. The interview has over twenty questions and answers including the following on sound:

3Drage: Will the game make use of A3d 2.0 or EAX and will those with 4 speaker setup get any extra sound quality?

Moynihan: 4-speaker setups will be supported via EAX and A3D. We are also considering audio obstruction/occlusion effects as well as realtime audio effects processing such as reverb and delay.

3Drage:What type of music will be in the game?

Moynihan: It's a fusion of ethnic, tribal percussive sounds with a modern techno twist.

Disfigured Interview - Mark @ 07:55 EST

Beta Bites has posted an interview with Bryn Bennett of Xyla Development covering their upcoming title, Disfigured. Some pretty interesting stuff in the interview including info on custom sound for multiplayer (along the lines of custom skins) as well as the following information on 3D sound

Bryn: I designed the Caffeine Engine from the ground up. It contains many of the features found in current games as well as a few new ones. A list for people that care about technology is:

portal based space partitioning, lightmaps, curved surfaces, reflective surfaces, texture mapping, dynamic volume-based lighting, light halos, ray traced shadow maps, plug-in particle system architecture, physics based skeletons, deformable meshes with bulging muscles, facial expressions, specular reflections, animated texture maps, 3d sound via DirectSound3D, and probably a bunch of stuff that I'm forgetting.

"X" FAQ - Mark @ 00:20 EST

Egosoft has posted a FAQ for their demo of X, so if you are having problems with the demo be sure to check it out. The FAQ has a number of audio related Q&As. Thanks to VoodooExtreme for the pointer.

Thursday, June 24, 1999

Even More on DS 4.06.XX.XXXX - Mark @ 21:56 EST

This is a further follow-up to our Windows 98 SE DS 4.06.XX.XXXX resource manager problem post from yesterday. Our thanks again goes out to Sensaura's Peter Clare for the pointers on how to get the resource manager to work with Windows98 SE.

According to Peter, altering the DS version that ships with Win98 SE is possible and might make sence depending on what games/apps you are running and whether you want WDM audio drivers to work. It is possible to copy Win98 gold versions of dsound.dll and dsound.vxd into \windows\system. To avoid fighting the auto detection of old files you also need to copy the two files into \windows\sysbckup too. Take copies of the originals so that you can restore if needed. Reboot and all Voice Manager issues should be fixed.

Note that if you do use Win98 gold versions of the DirectSound files then don't expect WDM audio drivers to work and you will lose the changes (e.g. new fallback software 3D algorithms) that were introduced in the Win98 SE versions of DirectSound.

"X" Demo - Mark @ 21:45 EST

The English version of the 'X' Demo is now available. In this demo you end up in a completely undiscovered part of the universe. Alone and lost. Against you the firepower of more than 10000 potentially enemy ships. It's up to you to either fight or make sure not all of these ships really become your enemies.

3D positional sound acceleration through Aureal3D and Direct Sound 3D supported.

As per the usual, you can download it from 3Dfiles.

FSP2000 Review - Mark @ 21:38 EST

Review Zone has just published a review of the Cambridge SoundWorks FPS2000 Digital Speakers. You can also check out our recent review of the FPS2000 system.

Live!Ware 2.1 Coming Soon? - Mark @ 07:31 EST

Mikael spotted a posted from Creative Tech Support on the news groups which indicates that Live!Ware 2.1 is just a week or two away. The were no details as to just what this upgrade might fix at this stage. We will see if we can get any more details.

More Aureal @ E3 - Mark @ 07:27 EST

Thanks to Aureal's Skip McIlvaine for pointing out a couple new E3 features that we missed. Both are from a site called Game Vortex. One is on 3DML from Flatland and gets into its use of A3D 2.0 and the other is on Alienware's use of Vortex 2 boards in their systems.

Aureal to go Retail? - Mark @ 07:13 EST

A report on Avault yesterday dealing with Aureal's responds to the Diamond S3 merger implies that Aureal may move into the retail chain with future products. Here is a snip from the report:

Bob Safir, director of communications for Aureal, replicated S3 and Diamond’s chant that, as far as today is concerned, it is business as usual. But what about tomorrow? “What I can say is that there is an industry trend with high tech companies such as 3dfx that own intellectual property to become a retail provider,” Safir told the Adrenaline Vault. “While we hope the merger with S3 does well for Diamond, it does not affect plans already in motion to provide Vortex2 to new outlets.”

Is Safir implying that Aureal is closing in on becoming a direct-to-retail provider? He did everything but confirm it is a done deal, saying, “I wouldn’t want to officially announce anything prematurely, but you can deduce what our plans are from current industry trends. Companies such as 3dfx are going right to consumer, and we are not oblivious to this trend. We have been closely analyzing our position in this business and what we might be able to do to bring the best possible audio technology to consumers at the best possible price.” Will this involve a similar merger with a company that has strong production and distribution muscles? Safir would not say.

Wednesday, June 23, 1999

More on DS 4.06.XX.XXXX - Mark @ 09:01 EST

Yesterday I posted information from EAR on DS 4.06.XX.XXXX being a BETA version which is best uninstalled from your system (see DirectX6 Beta Problems). Well Sensaura's audio expert Peter Clare has followed up with some additional information on the issue. Here are Peter's comments:

This is not strictly true. The DirectSound version numbers for the files supplied with Win98 SE (now shipping) begin with 4.06.xx.xxxx. These are not beta versions. Also, for anyone running Win98, installation of any of the DirectX 6 betas or full releases did not replace the DirectSound components. Those supplied with Win98 are newer than anything that comes with DirectX 6. However, they will only work on Win98 so no use in copying Win98 versions to Win95.

However, for people running Win98 SE there are reasons why one might want to still use the older versions of the DirectSound files (i.e. those supplied with Win98 gold). As I mentioned in passing in a previous mail, Voice Manager support is broken in Win98 SE. Any game that uses the VM property set when run on Win98 SE will not get the DirectSound3D hardware acceleration that it expects. Worse, driver buffer interfaces aren't released correctly which may require an operating system reboot after such a game has run before the sound card can be used correctly again.

Cheers,

Pete

Tuesday, June 22, 1999

Yamaha Goes Quad and Beyond - Mark @ 13:30 EST

Yamaha is showing two new sound cards at the PC Expo '99. The XG-Quad features 4-channel sound, with 64 XG voices in hardware. Software providing 256 XG voices is available as an option. The new sound card uses Yamaha's YMF744 (DS-1S) chip and supports the EAX. The signal to noise ration (S/N) is greater than 90 dB. EAX and 3D audio support will once again be provide by Sensaura. More details can be found in today’s press release.

The second card being shown by Yamaha at PC Expo '99 is the XG-Movie 5.1(TM) Digital Surround Card. It supports Dolby(TM) Digital, and Digital Theatre Sound (DTS(TM)) using Yamaha's YMF744 and YSS912 audio chips. The new audio card provides a variety of surround effects from church, jazz, hall, disco, live, stadium and theatre using a sub-DSP (digital signal processor) in the Yamaha YSS912. The XG-Movie 5.1 Digital Surround Card outputs 5.1-channel audio (left, center, right, left-surround, right-surround, center and LFE, sometimes referred to as subwoofer) that delivers cinema quality effects. The card accepts both analog and digital input sources and provides both analog and digital output. Signal to noise ratio (S/N) is greater than 96 dB. Again, you can get more details from their second press release. Thanks to AnandTech for the initial pointer. As per our usual, look for us to follow up with lots more info on these two cards.

Quadzilla Review - Mark @ 12:50 EST

FiringSquad's just posted a review on Turtle Beach's Montego II Quadzilla, a Vortex2 card which features some high-end extras including a professionally implemented SPDIF, and a software bundle worth caring about.

First Reflections - Mark @ 01:06 EST

A new take on Half-Life and audio is up in the "First Reflections" section of "Wavetracings" at A3D.com.

Hoontech Optical I/O - Mark @ 01:03 EST

3D Audio Immersion 2.0 has a pointer to some cool information on Hoontechs new $39 I/O board for the SBLive/Live value. Here is some of the info but you will have to pay 3DAI a visit for the link as they are working hard to reestablish their traffic after an unplanned URL change. The specs describe an "optional board for Sound Blaster Live!/ Value, SB Digital I/O III, supports 4-Channal Digital Outputs for 96kHz 24-bit 4CH S/PDIF Digital Amplifier, ST external 96kHz 24-bit DAC Boxes. 96kHz 24-bit DAC sound quality from the ST external Boxes and ST S/PDIF Digital Amplifer provide the best sound quality in comparison to the DAC from the SBLive!/Value." The board has both optical and coaxial digital In/Out, AES/EBU In/Out & CD digital In.

DirectX6 Beta Problems - Mark @ 00:44 EST

This probably will not affect too many people but just in case, here is a note that I snagged from Extreme Audio Reality:

Anyone who has a DirectSound version beginning with 4.06.XX.XXXX has a BETA version of DirectSound that was never officially released and is not supported by any hardware vendors. The only problem is, the Microsoft DirectX installer does not overwrite this file (since it has a higher version number). Your best bet is to uninstall DirectX6 BETA before installing DirectX6/6.1 RELEASE.

Swat 3 3D Sound - Mark @ 00:20 EST

GA-Source has posted an interview with Rod Fung, Producer and John Anderson, AI Programmer from Sierra Studios. The interview deals with their current project which is Swat 3: Close-Quarter Battle. The interview included the following Q & A:

What can you tell me about your SWAT 3's game engine? What are its major features, and does it have any special or unusual ones?

The game engine was developed in-house specifically for SWAT 3. At Sierra Studios we call the graphics engine appropriately, the 'SWAT engine'. It is a cell and portal based which allows incredibly detailed and realistic environments.

Some of the major features of the SWAT engine are the ability to render true mirrors and reflections, volumetric dynamic lighting, 3D sound, dynamic vertex lighting for characters, split skeleton animation system, and additional viewports which allow you to monitor your team members movements. In addition, we have an extensive artificial intelligence system that drives your fellow SWAT team members as well as the suspects and hostages.

Our graphics engine emulates real-world physics giving the player the ability to shoot through walls and doors, including the ability to track ballistics of weapons. Our characters have hit specific damage and actually bleed and drip blood. We have an ingenious split-skeleton animation system that lets us combine various upper body animations with lower body animations.

Monday, June 21, 1999

FPS2000 Review! - Mark @ 23:47 EST

A couple of years ago if someone was to walk up to you and tell you that you could buy a great sounding set of speakers that could sit on your desktop and sell them to you for $200 or less you would probably come to one of two conclusions. They sound bad or they were hot...If someone told you that they would hold the price and sell you a five piece system you would have probably walked away laughing. Well on March 16th Cambridge SoundWorks announced the shipment of its latest multimedia speaker system, the FPS2000 digital and it does just that. Great sound on your desktop from a five piece system for $200 or less. This system is a step up from the entry level PCWorks FourPoint Surrounds which were introduced last year and come with lots more power, a new subwoofer design, options for digital and analog connectivity, a great volume control and fader setup and to top it off, it comes in the currently trendy black finish.

As you can tell we are quite impressed with the system. To get all the details on why we were so impressed please check our review which offers an overview of the system, installation details, performance tests and our final summary.

For another look at the FPS2000 system you can also check out the review at 3DUnlimited with thanks to A3D Central for the pointer.

Encore 6X DVD Kit - Mark @ 23:44 EST

Creative has released new drivers for their Dxr3 card. Mikael returned the kit two and a half weeks before these drivers were released so while we have not been able to test the drivers, according to posts in the newsgroup they solve the last chapter issue (it would not play the last chapter of Columbia Tristar movies) and now displays correctly on PAL TVs. The release also include drivers for NT4. We had marked the Kit down quite heavily because of these significant issues but with the issued looked after we have revised the review and increased the rating significantly (95/100).

If you had read the complete review before then you only need to read the last page to get the updates.

Week in Review - Mark @ 08:48 EST

We have posted our latest edition of the 3D Audio Week in Review covering June 14th to June 20th. This weekly newsletter covers new driver releases, games, patches and demos that support 3D sound including information on any new bugs, bug fixes and other tips. The newsletter now also includes links to all sound related hardware reviews on the web as well as updates on what we did and what we plan to do in the coming week. The 3D Audio Week in Review is a great way for busy people to be right on top of all latest in the PC audio world.

DVD-ROM Guide - Mark @ 07:47 EST

Extreme Hardware has posted a new guide, this time covering off the available 4-6X DVD-ROM units. The guide including pics, specs and links to manufacturers and looks to be a great resource forthose looking to buy a new PC DVD-ROM drive.

Benwin BW2000 Review - Mark @ 00:15 EST

FPS3D has posted their review of Benwin's BW2000 Flat Panel speaker system. You can also check out our own review of the BW2000 system.

News from June 14-June 20

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