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      <h5><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">//<a href="../../../index.html"><font color="#7C420E">loonygames</font></a>://<a href="../index.html"><font color="#7C420E">issue 
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                      <p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000FF"><i><a href="../../2.1/uc/index.html"><font color="#904C10" size="3">Sounds 

                        From All Over</font></a></i></font></b><br>
                      
                      <div align="right"> <font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">By 
                        <a href="mailto:jsimpson@ravensoft.com">Jake Simpson</a></font></div>
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                  <td width="45%" align="right" valign="top"> 
                    <h5 align="right"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#00025E">Vol. 
                      2, Issue 4&nbsp; <br>
                      November 29, 1999&nbsp; </font></b></h5>
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              <loonystart> 
              <p align="right">&nbsp;</p>
              
            <p align="left"> <font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">It's worth 
              pointing out that we still haven't reached the nirvana of speaker 
              support yet, since all of these speaker solutions only offer 2 dimensional 
              sound systems - IE they are all on one level. With 4 speakers, you 
              can hear a sound anywhere around you in the horizontal, but not 
              the vertical. You need a speaker over the top of you, and one beneath 
              you for that to work correctly. Both Creative and Aureal mention 
              that they offer some algorithms for simulating vertical sounds on 
              a horizontal setup, but quite frankly, if you can hear it, then 
              you've got better ears than every one I know. There's no substitute 
              for physical positioning of a sound source I'm afraid. Not that 
              it is really that much of a problem for today's crop of FPS games, 
              since most of them are played on a horizontal basis. <b>Quake</b> 
              is a good example. While it gives you 6 degrees of freedom, it really 
              only uses 4 degrees in practical game play. Hearing a sound directly 
              above you is not critical to successful game play. On the other 
              hand, if you&#146;re playing <b>Descent</b>, or <b>Freespace</b>, 
              or any space sim, then it&#146;s a different story.</font></p>
            <p align="left"></p>
            <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">So the current 
              state of 3D sounds in games requires one of the two prevalent sound 
              systems: Creative Labs' EAX sound system, or the Aureal A3D sound 
              system. There's also the Miles Sound System, which deserves a mention 
              as well. There are others on the horizon, but since they aren't 
              here now, we won't dwell on them.</font></p>
            <p align="left"></p>
            <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Creative 
              Labs gives us EAX, and what a solution it is. I attended this years 
              Creativity Conference, and they certainly have their...&quot;stuff&quot; 
              together. They have a road map for EAX 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, etc, etc, 
              etc. EAX revolves around 'Environment sets' (EAX stands for Environmental 
              Audio. What the X is for is anyone's guess. Probably means the same 
              as the GTX letters you get on cars). The idea behind environmental 
              audio is that the audio preferences of your surroundings reflect 
              the type of surroundings you have. IE if you are in an echo-y cave 
              in the game, then you get lots of reflective sound effects. When 
              you move from one area to another, you can re-set these environment 
              property sets, thus changing the surrounding area's aural characteristics. 
              There is more to EAX of course, but this is the core of what it's 
              attempting to do. Also, it's important to distinguish between EAX 
              and the SB Live! physical card too. Think of EAX as a 'Glide' type 
              API, and the SB Live! as a voodoo card, and you get the idea. EAX 
              is suited to the SB Live!'s feature set, but unlike 'Glide' can 
              be adapted for use on other cards - and we'll talk about that a 
              bit further in.</font></p>
            <p align="left"></p>
            <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Getting 
              back to the property sets - the big problem is knowing which one 
              to set them to. It involves knowing the environment you are in. 
              There are numerous ways to do this, from dropping markers in the 
              world maps that contain a distance and a property set - if you are 
              within the range of the marker, this is your property set - to detecting 
              the architecture around you, how close it all is, and deciding which 
              property set to use based on that. But Creative has come the rescue 
              on this front with a tool they call Eagle. </font></p>
            <p align="left"></p>
            <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br></loonystart> 
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<p><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2">Credits: Illustration 
  &copy; 1999 Dhabih Eng. This article is &copy; 1999 Jake Simpson. All other 
  content is &copy; 1999 loonyboi productions. Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited. 
  So don't do it, or we'll make your ears bleed.</font></i></p>
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