4 ms·

Also, disk space became cheap enough that the game could store audio files (such as MP3s) instead of generating the audio on the fly by the sound card. I rememb

Also, disk space became cheap enough that the game could store audio files (such as MP3s) instead of generating the audio on the fly by the sound card. I remember Age of Empires (released 1997) music were MIDI files and the "instruments" would be changed by the game's code to make the music sound much better. EverQuest (1999) also started with MIDI files but later expansions replaced the music with MP3 files.

happymellon 4y ago
Surely this is like the raytracing scenario for GPUs. There are always slightly harder, and better ways of doing something which the accelerators are better at. Audio acceleration I guess peaked too early or they just couldn't get the tech demos as impressive as graphics. I remember reading about a demo, which I believe was from Matrox. They managed to get an audio 3D environment working over a pair of stereo headphones which was good enough that you could play Doom headless. Just close your eyes and you could tell where people were. A lot of what I read about here is that prerecorded samples is good enough, in the same way that raster lighting is good enough and raytracing is a waste of time.
- Sharlin 4y ago
  Diminishing returns. But IIRC the thing that killed 3D audio was patent wars, like what happened to force feedback.
  - Godel_unicode 4y ago
    Huh? Force feedback and 3d audio both very much still exist.
  - happymellon 4y ago
    I honestly think it is the same as the iGPU. It is cheap enough that it is bundled with everything. But that doesn't make it better than a discrete GPU/Audio chip. Intel GPUs are barely good enough to run an OS desktop yet they hold the majority of the market.
Sharlin 4y ago
Sure, that's what I meant by "once CD quality digitized audio became cheap enough to store". Both the fact that once games started to be shipped on CD, they could literally play audio tracks straight from the CD, and the fact that faster CPUs and better codecs made it feasible to ship compressed audio and decode it in realtime.

happymellon 4y ago

Surely this is like the raytracing scenario for GPUs. There are always slightly harder, and better ways of doing something which the accelerators are better at. Audio acceleration I guess peaked too early or they just couldn't get the tech demos as impressive as graphics. I remember reading about a demo, which I believe was from Matrox. They managed to get an audio 3D environment working over a pair of stereo headphones which was good enough that you could play Doom headless. Just close your eyes and you could tell where people were. A lot of what I read about here is that prerecorded samples is good enough, in the same way that raster lighting is good enough and raytracing is a waste of time.

Sharlin 4y ago
Diminishing returns. But IIRC the thing that killed 3D audio was patent wars, like what happened to force feedback.
- Godel_unicode 4y ago
  Huh? Force feedback and 3d audio both very much still exist.
- happymellon 4y ago
  I honestly think it is the same as the iGPU. It is cheap enough that it is bundled with everything. But that doesn't make it better than a discrete GPU/Audio chip. Intel GPUs are barely good enough to run an OS desktop yet they hold the majority of the market.

Sharlin 4y ago

Sure, that's what I meant by "once CD quality digitized audio became cheap enough to store". Both the fact that once games started to be shipped on CD, they could literally play audio tracks straight from the CD, and the fact that faster CPUs and better codecs made it feasible to ship compressed audio and decode it in realtime.