EAX or A3D in INF, any good?

[Kossuth]

I was experimenting with my Diamond MX300's 3d audio stuff, and started thinking, do the INF maps usually support any positional or enviromental audio modes and can I use them to help me play better, or are they there just for ear-candy.

I just remember the times I played Thief TDP and could really use A3D to pinpoint the location of guards, by listening through doors and thin walls. This kind of system would be absolutely cool in INF because the positional information you get from your ears in real life can be really important in deciding do you survive or not.

Ps. if this is wrong forum, please direct me to the right one, I'm new.

[RogueLeader]

Some maps take advantage of EAX, some don't. If you use EAX and install Creative Lab's patch for UT it adds EAX effects to all the normal sounds.

[Lord_Bunker]

i think your probably reffering to the 3d sound part of eax, yes that works although ut doens't realy support either. it still has 3d sound. although creative does have an eax patch available. but that only works in maps that support it. it adds all the occlusion effects and what not that make eax so cool.

[Kossuth]

Ok, I'll go find more about the Creatives patch, but is the patch for UT or creative cards, because mine is Aureal and has the EAX implemented only in the software drivers.

I'm now using the 3d sound eneabled in the INF, but have disabled the geometric reverb from the drivers, because even if it sounds cool, it really messes up any of the directional audio it has.

And if I undestood you correctly UT/INF does not support A3D.

[Lord_Bunker]

nope, ut runs it's own deal. try i think it's www.eax.creative.com but i'm not 100% sure. the patch is for ut. then there's a set of libraries yo must download for it to work. it'll only have an effect on maps that it has libraries for. last time i checked that was only the stock ut dm maps. so it's not really worth it. it's best to just run the 3d sound and leave it at that.

[Kossuth]

Oh, thank you Lord, hallowed be thy messageboard.

Got the patch, and installed it, now I'm of to try the effects in normal UT.

I'm also thinking of rigging my fourspeaker system back, and seeing if I can get more than strereo out of the INF, with my soundcard.

[Kossuth]

Ok, got it working and also rigged the 4 speaker system up, and it works. In small levels it is really cool to spot the enemy by his foot steps and then pop the one round to his head as he comes around the corner. It also helps a lot to determine where the shooting is going on in larger maps. Also the EAX soud cool when you go to closed spaces it actually get some echo to the sound.

Thanks again for the link.

[gpk]

UT DOES HAVE native A3D 2.0 support (unreal had a3d 1.0)

I suggest that u turn OFF relections for a framerate boost when playing online...
u may wanna type "s_reflect 0" and/or "s_Wavetracing 0" in the console to turn off sound reflections in UT, u will still get 3 positioning without the calculated "reverbs" and reflections.
U may not wanna fool around with commands other than s_reflect,s_occlude and s_wavetracing .

EAX has no real equivalent for wavetracing as it does it's reverbs and reflections w/ presets rather than calculating them on the fly.

here are some A3D console command for UT
s_occfactor A3D 2.0 occlusion factor
s_maxnodedist A3D 2.0 maximum node distance
s_reflect 0 or 1 A3D 2.0 reflections
s_occlude 0 or 1 A3D 2.0 occlusions
s_wavetracing 0 or 1 A3D 2.0 Wavetracing
s_refgain A3D 2.0 reflection gain
s_refdelay A3D 2.0 reflection delay
s_maxpoly A3D 2.0 maximum number of polygons
s_maxreflectpoly A3D 2.0 maximum number of reflection polygons
s_polysmall A3D 2.0 smallest polygon size
s_polylarge A3D 2.0 large polygon size
s_a3dsources A3D 2.0 Sources

gpk


******** excerpt from a previous post of mine below, some useful info:

A3D 2.0 enable occlusions and reflections (wave tracing)on top the standard 3d positioning. A3D was A GREAT API!!! Problem is , if not coded as well as it should be Wavetracing gives u a pretty big FPS hit. Heretic2 with the downloadable enhancement pack is the BEST coded A3D2 game out there, 5% hit with ALL the bells and whistles. UT seems as though it coulda used more tweaking.

A3D does NOT use presets to do it's occlusions and reflections, it calculates them based on level geometry. Hence relflections work in any UT level,wiha hit to the FPS though, tu turn off reflections type "S_REFLECT 0" in any A3D2 supporting game's console. I believe this does not affect occlusions where applicable.

EAX on the other hand uses resets to do it's reflections and (occlusions) so the map must be modifed to support it. This is why Creative Labs has released patches (only VERY recently ) to modify the standard UT DM and CTF levels (few of em).

Presets have the advantage of being speedy, but are nowhere near as immersive as A3D2 on the fly calculations. Play Half life single player w A3D2 and u will see what I mean. Sound reflectiosnmx change dynamically as u walk thru rooms and corridors....VERY COOL !

UT doesn't seems to support EAX+DS3D as well as it does A3D. U can hear bugs and pops in the 3d sound field sometimes.

A3D is widely reported as having better 2 speaker 3d sound , and much better headphone 3d sound. EAX+DS3D generally offers better 4 speaker 3d sound pos as A3D uses panning for the rear speakers instead off HRTF positioning.

[Kossuth]

Ok, even bigger thanks to you gpk, the 3D audio sound very cool, and it has saved my butt several times from a flanking attack. Now I'm really happy with my sound system, so thanks to everybody who contributed to this thread. Now I'm off to test which one is better for my systems, quadspeakers or headphones.