NextGen Audio: Tempest Engine, Project Acoustics, Windows Sonic, Dolby Atmos, DTS X

[chris1515]

https://twistedvoxel.com/sie-bend-s...nematic-quality-facial-animation-3d-audio-mp/

Next SIE Bend game (Days Gone 2?) will have 3d audio support.

SIE Bend Studio has released Days Gone last year, which was their first major new open-world IP for the PS4. They are now hiring for a new project.

Sony Bend Studio has previously worked on the PlayStation Vita Uncharted spin-off and Syphon Filter series. They developed a brand new IP for the PlayStation 4 with Days Gone, which was released last year. They have been aggressively recruiting for new job opening since then and their latest job descriptions spill some details on what they are planning for the PS5.

The official careers page for Sony Bend Studio has job openings for Senior Staff Engine Programmer, Rigging Technical Artist, Senior Gameplay Programmer, Pipeline Technical Artist, and Senior Audio Programmer. They also have a job listing open for a Senior Network Programmer on Linkedin, although it mentions Days Gone as the AAA game despite the game launching a year ago.

The description for Rigging Technical Artist mentions a focus on high-quality character animations including expressions and deformations.

“Create high quality character rigs with cinematic-quality facial articulation, ” reads the job description. Another one point mentions realistic deformations for the character model.

“Develop and implement skinning methods to achieve realistic deformation for faces, bodies, and clothes, including the creation of tools and scripts to assist in completing these tasks quickly and efficiently during production.”

Senior Audio Programmer description meanwhile lists “experience working on environmental audio, sound propagation and 3D audio” as one of the desirable skills. This could point towards their next project supporting the 3D Audio feature for the PS5.

Lastly, they still have a Senior Network Programmer job opening but the description has no mention of a new AAA project. It simply talks about Days Gone despite the game already being available for close to a year. It is hard to imagine Bend Studio creating multiplayer for Days Gone at this stage, so either it is for a sequel to the game, or an entirely new project.

 

[PSman1700]

Next SIE Bend game (Days Gone 2?) will have 3d audio support.

That's a guarantee? These consoles fitted with 3d audio hardware then they better make use of it

 

[chris1515]

That's a guarantee? These consoles fitted with 3d audio hardware then they better make use of it

SIE bend Job offer

Senior Audio Programmer description meanwhile lists “experience working on environmental audio, sound propagation and 3D audio” as one of the desirable skills. This could point towards their next project supporting the 3D Audio feature for the PS5.

 

[PSman1700]

SIE bend Job offer

Yes i assumed games are actually going to use 3d audio now that consoles have the hardware for it

 

[AlNom]

Hm.

UE4.25

Convolution Reverb
With the new Convolution Reverb effect, you can now digitally simulate realistic acoustics in virtual environments using samples from physical or designed spaces for more realistic reverberation.

• Convolution Reverb is a data-driven counterpart to more traditional reverb techniques. Instead of simulating reverberation using a combination of delay buffers, filters, and various other DSP topologies, convolution reverb employs audio samples that act as acoustic measurements of real or designed spaces in order to simulate the acoustics of actual rooms and environments.
  
  
• Convolution reverb is commonly used in film and television production to create richer, more lifelike mixes by enhancing the "worldizing" of sounds and dialogue recorded off-set or in a studio, usually during post-production.

Native Soundfield Ambisonics Rendering
Unreal Engine now supports rendering Soundfield Ambisonics to provide a fully immersive spherical sonic experience. Soundfields differ from conventional surround sound because while surround sound assets provide a fair representation of a static sound bed, ambisonic assets envelop the listener, allowing them to rotate within the soundfield, creating more realistic immersion for interactive environments.

Visual representations of the first four bands of real spherical harmonic functions. Blue portions are regions where the function is positive, and yellow portions represent regions where it is negative. Image by Inigo.Quilez . This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

• Soundfields are the audio analog to spherical harmonics for lighting. Using soundfield recordings in-engine as audio "sky boxes," soundfields can be rotated in relation to listener and source orientations.
  
  
• Native soundfields significantly improve spatial depth through ambient sound, regardless of the user's speaker configuration.
  
  
• Since soundfields can be captured from field recordings using specialized microphones, rendering these sound fields significantly increases environmental realism.

 

[Arwin]

Actually doesn’t the PS5 controller have two mics?

 

[BRiT]

Wasn't that 2 turntables and a microphone?

 

[disco_]

Actually doesn’t the PS5 controller have two mics?

3 mic array IIRC.

 

[Frenetic Pony]

SIE bend Job offer

Kinda weird that they're offering unless they're switching audio engines. UE4's new high end audio engine does pretty well for itself, and I'd hardly be surprised if it got Tempest support in decent time.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Kinda weird that they're offering unless they're switching audio engines. UE4's new high end audio engine does pretty well for itself, and I'd hardly be surprised if it got Tempest support in decent time.

guaranteed it has support.

 

[Scott_Arm]

UE 4.25 ambisonics

https://twitter.com/x/status/1273631558109286400

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Decent quality version:

Very impressive.

 

[Ike Turner]

I mean... it's not like this is some ground breaking stuff that isn't already available (even in UE4..)
https://valvesoftware.github.io/steam-audio/
Epic are just implementing their own native version in the engine & pimping it as the second coming of Obi Wan as they always do..

 

[AlNom]

Does that make it unrealistic

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I guess we should ignore it. Also, we should ignore the recent talk about Oodle RDO compression because RDO compression is years old. And we shouldn't really talk about SSDs in the consoles because SSDs aren't anything new.

Heck, consoles have been around for decades. I guess we should just wrap this forum up then. Thanks for coming everyone!

 

[BRiT]

That's a bold strategy...

 

[Ike Turner]

I guess we should ignore it. Also, we should ignore the recent talk about Oodle RDO compression because RDO compression is years old. And we shouldn't really talk about SSDs in the consoles because SSDs aren't anything new.

Heck, consoles have been around for decades. I guess we should just wrap this forum up then. Thanks for coming everyone!

Nah.."we" should just stop blindly parroting PR material without putting such PR material into context...

 

[Shifty Geezer]

It's just an example of an update to UE, one of the most popular engines out there, introducing a new audio feature to the engine, posted in a thread about improving game audio. No-one's claimed it's new or better than anything done before or unique to UE, so what exactly is the problem with it? What should have happened?

1) Epic add the feature and don't tell anyone
2) Epic announce it but it's not shared on B3D
3) Epic announce it and it's shared in a next-gen audio thread on B3D
4) Epic announce it and it's shared in a next-gen audio thread on B3D but only with accompanying links to all prior art to show it's just a case of Epic doing what everyone else is doing who themselves were just implementing ideas going back into the 60s or whenever?

 

[Deleted member 13524]

I guess we should ignore it. Also, we should ignore the recent talk about Oodle RDO compression because RDO compression is years old. And we shouldn't really talk about SSDs in the consoles because SSDs aren't anything new.

Heck, consoles have been around for decades. I guess we should just wrap this forum up then. Thanks for coming everyone!

To be fair, we're seeing hardware implementation of RDO with practical examples only now.
We've had convolution reverb in games, using dedicated hardware, for over 20 years now.

Still, it's great that devs are finally looking at audio as an important part of the immersion experience. For the last 10-15 years I've been hearing "who cares I use TV speakers lulz". Hopefully this will change.

 

[Allandor]

Had any game (non-kinect-game) used the shape chip in the xbox one for anything?

The big problem for "good audio" in a game still is the TV. In 90% of cases audio goes through tiny TV speakers. In some better cases it is an soundbar, some users might use heaphones and a really really tiny fraction of users use 5.1+ sound systems. I really still don't see how audio should get improved if most users just don't notice it. For the developer it is more or less just a waste of time if it isn't part of the engine he/she uses.

Yes i assumed games are actually going to use 3d audio now that consoles have the hardware for it

Well the hardware for 3d positional audio is part of consoles since .... well it old.
If I remember correctly even the original xbox had an audio chips that supported 3d positional audio (PS3 and xbox 360 had one, too).
But that even died on PC. Still have my x-fi here, but no longer in my computer because of driver issues and .. well the chip is really not used anymore by anything.