Sound Physics

[Canoro Philipp]

I was looking at a mod that adds sound physics for Minecraft, made me think that maybe Sound Physics and Sound Filters could be added to Second Life.

We have Windlight, mesh, shadows, ambient occlusion, our visual side can be breathtaking, but the sound improvements has been forgotten, I think it would improve the SL Immersive experience a lot more, allowing creators to deliver more realistic experiences.

Here are some videos demonstrating the sound improvements:

https://youtu.be/qOQNSZBzD9Q

https://youtu.be/Gi-6M6uslzM

do you think that SL sound engine needs an improvement?

what do you think?

[Canoro Philipp]

maybe something like Steam Audio can be integrated

 

[Solar Legion]

Steam Audio is an attempt to update and reintroduce a technology made by Aureal Semiconductor - namely their A3D audio technology, something which - at the time - was leaps and bounds better than Creative Lab's own EAX system (and arguably still is).

Had the legal crapfest not been a thing - along with the subsequent bankruptcy, buy out and burial of the tech - we might be enjoying that technology right now in every sound chip.

ETA: My family had a PC with an A3D powered sound card in the late 90's/early 2000's - one of the last made by Diamond Multimedia before they vanished for a while. It was their Monster Sound MX300.

Combining a quadraphonic speaker setup with the A3D tech was amazing - provided you had games that could use it or music in Quad or higher channel formats.

Edited February 20, 2020 by Solar Legion

[Canoro Philipp]

If the technology isn't available right now, wish I could get a hold of an old soundcard that still have it and install it in my PC.

Maybe it would add those sound physics to Second Life.

Maybe it's a matter of computer audio company to provide it, maybe with some extra code to Second Life to have sound react to the technology of the sound cards.

[Solar Legion]

7 minutes ago, Canoro Philipp said:

If the technology isn't available right now, wish I could get a hold of an old soundcard that still have it and install it in my PC.

Maybe it would add those sound physics to Second Life.

Maybe it's a matter of computer audio company to provide it, maybe with some extra code to Second Life to have sound react to the technology of the sound cards.

There were a few, more generalized settings you could use and play around with to cause programs that did not have the hooks already present to sound better, which you'd be better off using for Second Life anyway. The technology at the time was a fair bit more extensive in scope than EAX, requiring the designers of a game to code for the varied surfaces and materials.

That would have been a bit of a PITA to do with/for Second Life, owing to the user generated content.

Even the Minecraft mods that add scaled down, similar effects require you to specify certain properties for any custom blocks/content - well, the last time I used Minecraft that is (about a year or so ago).

[Lyssa Greymoon]

11 minutes ago, Canoro Philipp said:

If the technology isn't available right now, wish I could get a hold of an old soundcard that still have it and install it in my PC.

Good luck, you'll need a PCI slot, and driver support ended like 20 years ago.

[Solar Legion]

2 minutes ago, Lyssa Greymoon said:

Good luck, you'll need a PCI slot, and driver support ended like 20 years ago.

That too, sadly.

[Canoro Philipp]

It's surprising that technology has developed so much, so precise, and yet, sound has been forgotten without improvements.

is not enough to give us more sound resolution, there are so many areas that the sound experience could be improved, and yet, what we have so far is better sound resolution and division of sound in speakers.

It's like if there wouldn't be any graphics improvements in games besides higher resolutions and bigger screens.

[Canoro Philipp]

I was looking at a video that says that sound can't be made better.

Creative SoundBlaster gave up and the only thing they could offer is led lights in the soundcard.

How about auto adjustment of sound depending on the physical environment? like sending a beep during the setup, with a microphone on the speakers so they know how separated they are from each other and the echo they receive? how about, when having a triple screen setup, when you have monitors with integrated speakers, each screen would play a different sound set, like watching a movie in one monitor would send the sound to the correct monitor, playing SL in another monitor would send the sound there, and if you are playing a videogame maximized to the three screens, you would hear the sound pass by thru the speakers integrated in the monitor?

[cheesecurd]

11 hours ago, Lyssa Greymoon said:

Good luck, you'll need a PCI slot, and driver support ended like 20 years ago.

Kaby Lake at the newest, 3rd party drivers, Linux compatible drivers, or forwards compatible patches exist.

Right now I could plug in my Turtle Beach Santa Cruz from 2001 into a PC running an i7 7700K and have it function as intended on Windows 10 or Linux.

Because the driver for it is dirt simple and installs on any windows version, and the Linux compatible driver still works just the same.

[Tolya Ugajin]

On 2/20/2020 at 2:37 PM, Canoro Philipp said:

I was looking at a mod that adds sound physics for Minecraft, made me think that maybe Sound Physics and Sound Filters could be added to Second Life.

We have Windlight, mesh, shadows, ambient occlusion, our visual side can be breathtaking, but the sound improvements has been forgotten, I think it would improve the SL Immersive experience a lot more, allowing creators to deliver more realistic experiences.

Here are some videos demonstrating the sound improvements:

https://youtu.be/qOQNSZBzD9Q

https://youtu.be/Gi-6M6uslzM

do you think that SL sound engine needs an improvement?

what do you think?

As long as it doesn't make SL more tasking to the average computer to run, I agree, it would be terrific.  Imagine being able to hook SL up to your RL sound system during a performance by one of the better live singers in SL.  Or how much better vehicles would be with good, realistic, sound.  You, Sir, are a visionary.