Thief the dark project supports HRTF through OpenAL Soft[0]. Head related transfer function is the.. modeling of how sound waves bounce of your body (shoulders

Thief the dark project supports HRTF through OpenAL Soft[0]. Head related transfer function is the.. modeling of how sound waves bounce of your body (shoulders, ears, breast). And it's a part of how we determine where a sound is coming from. Other part is the timing, as in the difference of phase of sound coming in one and in the other ear. Amplitude(volume) is also a part, probably, but we are much more sensitive to difference in phase then amplitude. If you want to start researching in these things; the start is probably "impulse response" as well as.. a lot really (systems and signals is a heavy book that i should read one day). Just remember that everything is a spring. As for practical modeling in 3D games and such. The problem is almost the same as global illumination. You would need to model the whole environment and how it responds to sound (absorption, reflection, idk probably even the speed of sound in various materials to be accurate). A great youtube person has a couple videos on whitepapers about this [1-2](the 2 is more practical). Valve bought a company that played with these things, but idk if anything came out of it (iirc it is part of the steam framework now). [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VW-W3A2l5UE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VW-W3A2l5UE [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzsZ2qMtEUE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzsZ2qMtEUE [2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx8viOFKiIs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx8viOFKiIs PS Headphones are better then 5.1/7.1 for surround sound, mostly because of room acoustics.