The intensity of a sound in an ideal gas is proportional to 1/r^2, where r is the distance between the sound source and the sound receiver (in a game, the playe

The intensity of a sound in an ideal gas is proportional to 1/r^2, where r is the distance between the sound source and the sound receiver (in a game, the player). Specifically, I2 = I1 * (r1 / r2)^2. You can use L = 10 log_10 (I2/I1) dB to determine acoustic intensity levels in decibels. Long story short, if you want to cull sound sources, you need to do it based on both distance (well, squared distance, which is thankfully less expensive to calculate) and sound volume. Even that is an oversimplification: in reality, attenuation varies with every material surrounding the sound source, because it’s actually the result of the pressure wave being scattered and absorbed. I’m sure GameDev.net must have some reference articles on this…