[openal] B-Format support
Chris Robinson
chris.kcat at gmail.com
Sat Nov 1 06:28:36 EDT 2014
As of just a little bit ago, OpenAL Soft supports B-Format buffer
formats, with the AL_EXT_BFORMAT [1] and AL_EXT_MULAW_BFORMAT [2]
extensions. These formats store a 2D (typical surround sound) or 3D
sound field, and can be played back on about any conceivable speaker
layout, like mono, stereo, 5.1, and more. This makes it a good format
for better-than-stereo audio, like surround sound music or general game
world ambiance. The formats also support rotation, so orientating the
listener and/or source will rotate the sound (hopefully I've got the
rotation matrix right..).
[1] https://icculus.org/alextreg/wiki/AL_EXT_BFORMAT
[2] https://icculus.org/alextreg/wiki/AL_EXT_MULAW_BFORMAT
If anyone feels like playing around with them, please do, and let me
know if you encounter any issues. The one known issue is that this
doesn't work very well with HRTF; such sources will currently just be
rendered as plain stereo. I'm looking into ways to make it better, but
using HRTF with Ambisonics seems to be a fairly complex issue.
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