[quake3] Re: A3D

[pay7n at o2.pl]

Tim Angus pisze:
> Positional audio is supported via OpenAL, though this doesn't do the 
> HRTF stuff.

Yes that's the point. A3D is (actually was, before Aureal was bought by 
Creative) a superior sound system. It features advanced HRTF's, sound 
reflecting, occluding, wavetracing and so on, all based on 3D geometry 
near the sound source.

As I said, Id's Q3A had support for it. In Q3A retail version and all 
later patched versions up to 1.17, you can enable A3D system by entering 
in console `/s_enable_a3d`. Quake3 has many sound setting for you to 
change via console (apart from the really basic ones, like `s_volume` or 
`s_khz`) all of them are related to A3D.

Enabling A3D in your Q3A doesn't necessarily mean it will work. 
Actually, for most users it won't, because in order to get A3D you have 
to do one of the following:
- get a Vortex/Vortex2 based sound card
or
- get `A3D Support Files - Version 3.12`

"A3D Support Files: They are required for playing games that have been 
written to take advantage
of A3D 3.0. They will also support games written for A3D 1.x or A3D 2.0."

It means that if you don't have a Vortex soundboard to take advantage of 
hardware A3D support, you can take still use those DLL's and get A3D 
running via software processing. And although you won't get wavetracing 
(only Vortex2 chip does it), most of the effect are still there, and you 
surely will hear the difference.

To implementing (re-implement?) A3D in ioq3 you only need an A3D SDK. I 
am trying to test-drive it with MFC now, but there are some problems 
compiling in MSVS 2008. Any help in this task would be appreciated :)