When it comes to virtual reality gaming there’s one thing that has always been a major factor regarding immersion. It’s not the blocky controllers or the jagged movements of our in-game avatars. It’s sound. Yes, visuals still have a long way to go but there has been a steady improvement in that aspect of the field. Such an improvement has been lacking for audio, until now. Valve has just launched the Steam Audio kit for virtual reality developers, a tool to help them provide more immersive sound in games.
“Steam Audio is now available, delivering an advanced spatial audio solution for games and VR apps. Steam Audio includes several exciting features that significantly improve immersion and open up new possibilities for spatial audio design.”
– Anish Chandak, Senior Engineer at Valve.
So what exactly does it do? According to Valve, Steam Audio adds physics-based sound propagation on top of HRTF-based binaural audio, for increased immersion. As a result, sounds interact with and bounce off of the actual scene geometry, so they feel like they are actually in the scene, and give players more information about the scene they are in.
Binaural rendering is something we’ve seen a lot recently. It’s the act of recreating how a sound is affected by a listener’s head, ears, and torso, resulting in subtle cues that allow you to pinpoint where a sound is coming from. Another company that used it for gaming was Sennheiser, with their GSX 1000.
Steam Audio can also help simulate occlusion; an emitter of noise placed behind a solid object would sound muffled in VR. What’s more, Steam Audio also supports partial occlusion; if you see part of a sound source, part of the audio will be occluded.
Physics-based reverb is another important feature Steam Audio can help developers simulate. The way how geometric objects affect sound waves is important, allowing for subtle changes in tone and adding extra immersion to the environment. For example, a carpet would not reflect as much noise as a pane of glass. Furthermore, simulations can be run in real time, letting you switch around your furniture in VR to see how the sound is affected.
Real-time sound propagation is the act of sound waves interacting with a bunch of surfaces or objects before ultimately reaching your ears. Such varying levels of sound or tone are often painstakingly created by developers, a process the Steam Audio kit can do automatically.
Put it all together and you have a nifty developer kit to add extra immersion to virtual reality games all while reducing developer time. The best part for developers? It’s free and can be downloaded here.
Source: Steam
