EAX 2 and 3

The main event in the gaming industry last week was of course the Game Developer Conference (GDC). On the sound front Creative definitely got most attention for their EAX 2 and 3 announcement. The improvements in EAX 2 and 3 is support for obstruction and occlusion together with complete control of the reverb for the developer. They will also have several new features to help the developer master this new better control of what reverb is played. For gamers EAX 3 will probably mean much more immerse sound with more subtle reverb changes and a reverb that much closer matches the environment you're in.

There won't be any EAX 2 games instead Creative will wait until May when they will release the EAX 3 SDK (Software Development Kit).

It's unclear if any other company will be allowed to support EAX 3. We will of course follow up on this.

For more info about EAX 2 and 3 check out Creative's pr and their Environmental Audio site. We will also soon have an article to give more details what EAX 3 will mean for gamers.

Creative also mentioned that new drivers for the Live! card will not just support these new APIs but also include an improved 3D audio implementation and an even better reverb engine.

During GDC Creative also issued a release describing their contributions to the development of the DLS2 standard. 

I3DL2 announced, formerly known as I3D2

Another important announcement was the new standard I3DL2 API, which was followed by press releases from Creative, Sensaura, Aureal and QSound where they promised to support it. I3DL2 stands for IA-SIG Interactive 3D Audio Rendering Guideline Level 2. Aureal, Creative, QSound and Sensaura are all part of IA-SIG (a standard group) and worked together on this new API

Creative and Aureal will of course continue to push their own APIs but both promise that their SDKs will allow developers to take advantage of all the features of I3DL2 if the user happens to have a card that supports I3DL2 but not EAX 3 or A3D2 respectively.

I3DL2 isn't yet finalized but the proposal drafted by Jean-Marc Jot of Emu Systems is what Creative calls EAX 2 except for lack of backwards compatibility with EAX 1.0 in I3DL2 so reading the features mentioned as part of EAX 2 on Creative's Environmental Audio site should give you an good idea what to expect. It's basically EAX with the addition of obstruction, occlusion and more control of the reverb but not as much control or help that EAX 3 will give the developers to create a realistic sound experience.

The companies part of IA-SIG hope MS will include this new API in DirectX8, expected to ship the summer 2000.

Sensaura and ESS

Another company announcing new 3D sound technology during GDC was Sensaura, with their announcement of the MacroFX technology and their Multi-Speaker solution. The MacroFX technology is supposed to be better on rendering sound very close to you than current 3D audio technology and the Multi-Speaker solution  uses HRTF algorithms for each of the four individual speakers to provide the vertical sound cues, something Sensaura are currently the only one to do.

You can read more about these two technologies and Simon's impression about them in our Sensaura Technology article and in Simon's on site visit at Sensaura.

ESS that licenses the Sensaura technology announced their new 3D audio chip called the Canyon3D which will support both Sensaura's Multi-Speaker solution and their MacroFX technology, the latter will also be supported with soundcards using ESS' Maestro 2E and Yamaha's 724 chips, used in Videlogic's Sonic Storm Pro and Yamaha's WaveForce soundcards respectively and on many other soundcards and motherboards.

You can get more details from www.Canyon3D.com and we will be sure to follow up with more details and a hands on look as soon as we can get our hands on one.

Don't forget to read Aureal's David Gasior excellent report on the Game Developers Conference where he discuss what he heard and saw during GDC.

Other news on sound front last week was

What will happen outside of 3DsoundSurge this week

Not much 3D sound related is planned for next week. The demo of Quake 3 Arena and Kingpin may be available but none of them will support 3D sound. It's not even certain the final game will include it.

3DsoundSurge news last week

My (Mikael) monitor broke and all the VIP people (those we mail when stuff don't work like it should) where at GDC so several features got delayed. We still managed to post

• A review of MS Digital sound system. A USB speaker system that supports 3D sound without a soundcard but also works well with one.

What we currently are working on

Reviews that we are currently working on

• Trident's 4Dwave-DX chips: We are still waiting for Trident to clarify a few things about the card.
• MS Digital sound system: Can be read this week
• Shogo: Depends on when I get the monitor back
• Blood2: Depends on when I get the monitor back
• Videologic's Sonic Storm Pro; Uses the Sensaura technology and should be done next week.
• Sin
• Xitel's Vortex2 card
• Xitel's force feedback headphones
• Tribes
• Starsiege
• Thief
• Heretic II

Other features we are working on

• QSound article. We are only waiting for QSound to clarify a few things.
• An improved gamelist that will replace our soundwaves.
• An brief overview how the A3D2 SDK works
• An article about EAX 2, 3 and the new I3D2L