Crysis, Vista, and OpenAl

[H-street]

Here is an interesting tidbit, wondering if we'll see more of this during this transition period between WinXP and Vista..

saw this over on www.ve3d.com

There are no plans to support OpenAL. All effects we are using are real-time DSP effects, or reverb. That provides the same sound quality to everyone on any platform (like Vista) with any sound card.

you can read the full post here
http://www.incrysis.com/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=30615#p30615

one can only hope that more developers go the route of crysis..

 

[Zero82z]

one can only hope that more developers go the route of crysis..

Or not. Using software effects places a much larger load on the CPU, especially ones as complex as the ones that will be used in Crysis. You may not end up spending mor emoney on a soundcard, but you'll have to spend more on a better CPU and you still won't benefit from the general improvement that you'll get from a dedicated sound card.

 

[H-street]

its not so much the software solution for the DSP, its more along the lines that no matter what platform, you will get the same..


during this transition period i can easily see many developers taking the easy road and either supporting one or the other...


its nice to see crysis taking a better approach.

-edit

eg. the other options being, supporting no effects (EAX not working under Vista) or supporting EAX with DS3D and getting hosed under vista...


personally i'll take a software solution over nothing at all

 

[pfunkman]

Or not. Using software effects places a much larger load on the CPU, especially ones as complex as the ones that will be used in Crysis. You may not end up spending mor emoney on a soundcard, but you'll have to spend more on a better CPU and you still won't benefit from the general improvement that you'll get from a dedicated sound card.

Dont make a damn difference by the time the game comes out alot of poeple will be sporting quad core processors and worrying about sound being rendered on the CPU will be a thing of the past. For crytec its as simple as designing the game to decode the sound on 1 core and the rest devided on other cores. From what i have Crysis is being devoloped and optimized for quad core processors.

Personally i believe that developers should go this way and stomp out creatives stranglehold on gaming sound.

 

[Zero82z]

eg. the other options being, supporting no effects (EAX not working under Vista) or supporting EAX with DS3D and getting hosed under vista...

Or using EAX effects under OpenAL, which, in case you missed the memo, is the reason Microsoft dropped DirectSound support in Vista.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want Creative to have a monopoly on gaming sound any more than the next guy, but there are a lot of people who aren't going to upgrade to a quad-core system and who will be stuck with a big performance impact since their single or dual-core CPU will be struggling to handle advanced audio processing along with all the complex AI and physics calculations that will be used in Crysis. Yes, it is meant to be pushing the boundaries in terms of graphics and realism, but that doesn't mean it's necessary to drop a huge performance hit on a lot of people who don't have the most up-to-date uber gaming rig.

 

[jimmyb]

This is a win-win situation as far as I'm concerned.

Moving audio processing onto the cpu is a smart move in that users will no longer have to have specific hardware to get full sound processing. On the other hand, if this causes developers to move to OpenAL, then we'll get greater platform portability.

 

[Donnie27]

This is actaully Dumb or lazy at least. This is like saying we'll use Shader Model 1 and DirectX 8.1 so more Video cards can run it! Guys, a step down is not good, has nothing to do with Creative and is BS IMHO! Maybe the game should ship with more than one sound engine? It's not like that's never been done before.

 

[pfunkman]

This is actaully Dumb or lazy at least. This is like saying we'll use Shader Model 1 and DirectX 8.1 so more Video cards can run it! Guys, a step down is not good, has nothing to do with Creative and is BS IMHO! Maybe the game should ship with more than one sound engine? It's not like that's never been done before.

I think the point people are missing is that if the rumors are true DX10 will be far more efficient than 9 and previous. If thats true rendering sound on the CPU is very do-able. If games look better while using less resources why not pool those extra unused resources into sound processing anyway? Its not like crytek is a bunch of retards they are skilled devolopers and obviously have a plan to make this work well otherwise they would have taken the same lazy approach other developers have and fallen back on EAX and creative.

Its not crytek being lazy its all the other developers. From what i see they are trying to expand into different territories of sound options like people have been begging for, for years. If it works then great if not well at least someone tried...

It dont just suck for us being stuck behind EAX it sucks for devolopers too. you think they like having to devolop thier games to be able to use the latest EAX then having to develop them to use older EAX for people who have different cards etc.. The way it is now they have to figure in people that have creative sound cards, the various types of onboard sound and other manufacturers who dont even support EAX at all?? This way no matter what you have the sound is on one platform and they dont need to waste valuable resources spending time to get it working with 800 different varietys of sound cards etc.

 

[jimmyb]

This is actaully Dumb or lazy at least. This is like saying we'll use Shader Model 1 and DirectX 8.1 so more Video cards can run it! Guys, a step down is not good, has nothing to do with Creative and is BS IMHO! Maybe the game should ship with more than one sound engine? It's not like that's never been done before.

I don't see how this is a step down. Sound processing can be done on the CPU these days. It seems very sensible for games to make use of the excess cpu power (-consider that games are gpu limited generally-) to do something useful, as well as save us from buying an expensive sound card.

 

[phide]

This is like saying we'll use Shader Model 1 and DirectX 8.1 so more Video cards can run it!

It really isn't. Performing signal processing on one or more CPUs is completely viable in this day and age, so it is all the more reason for developers to take advantage of the available horsepower. Many calculations for reverb and occlusion (basic filtering) can be done very quickly on a modern floating-point processor -- we're not talking about Waves-quality reverb here. It's not a "step down", it's an alternative. A step down to you, perhaps, and to other CL owners, but you'll notice that not all necessarily want to own the products that you own.

A separate OpenAL-based audio engine with EAX support is far too much to ask of Crytek. In the end, you'll end up having the same experience as anyone else, and that's important. True audio bliss should not be reserved for those with one very particular brand of card in their rig, it should be something all should experience. Should I suffer because I don't want a Sound Blaster? I think not.

Crytek made a difficult choice here. On one hand, you have guaranteed hardware acceleration and EAX support via OpenAL in Vista, but only on Creative cards (and expensive wrappers or nothing on others). On the other, you have a sound engine interfacing with the now software-only DirectSound API, and you have far more compatibility with on-board sound codecs and non-Creative sound cards. I think Crytek made the right choice. We can bitch and moan about hardware acceleration all day, but it does come down to compatibility, and DirectSound has it at the very least.

And don't worry; I'm sure we're going to be given some options as to how much or how little processing we want taking place. Want to flatten the performance impact? Turn it all off. I think we're going to be given this option.

otherwise [Crytek] would have taken the same lazy approach other developers have and fallen back on EAX and creative.

I don't think utilizing EAX is lazy at all. It's something that's out there, it's free to work with, so why not utilize it? The issue is that you if you want to deliver the same experience to non-Creative owners, you're nearly doubling your workload, which is why most developers just drop EAX in and to hell with anything else.

but you'll have to spend more on a better CPU and you still won't benefit from the general improvement that you'll get from a dedicated sound card.

A dedicated sound card from one specific company, you mean? If a quad core processor is the true gateway to the real Crysis experience, then they're at least giving you some options. Go with AMD or go with Intel rather than going with Creative and having no other option.

We're also being a little rash here. We don't know the magnitude of the effects used and their burden on the CPU. Why are we assuming that the quad is the baseline? No developer has yet to truly effectively utilize the capabilities of two cores, so let's not be hasty. There's far more potential in our dualies than we have yet to experience.

 

[pfunkman]

Why are we assuming that the quad is the baseline? No developer has yet to truly effectively utilize the capabilities of two cores, so let's not be hasty. There's far more potential in our dualies than we have yet to experience.

I cant find it now but the intel forum video that was linked here a few weeks back somewhere had the guys from crytek demoing this game and he said it was running the game on a quad core reference chip to show it to everyone and that it was being optimized for quad core. He also went on to talk about the uses of the core, now he didnt mention sound i do remember him saying 1 cores job was solely physics rendering so assuming they are using a core for sound isnt stretching too far.

It was a cool video because he was actually playing it instead of just showing a video. Damn i wish i could find that link.

 

[H-street]

yea a similar thing was shown for Alan Wake..

you almost wonder if Quad Cores will move away from dedicated hardware again, the PPU and the hardware sound card maybe a thing of the past..


if the goal is to give the same experience to everyone (at least as much as possible) without regard to proprietary API's (eg.. you have to have hardware A to experience the game with certain options), then this a great thing for gamers..

 

[phide]

Well, first of all, I don't know how one can "optimize" for four logical processors. What Crytek is saying is that the engine will leverage four+ threads effectively, which just means the granularity is reasonable. Performance should be good on one, two or four cores, and the total number of threads created by the game may number in the hundreds regardless of the number of logical processors. Unless programmers have control over the scheduler, they have no control over thread dispatching.

If they dedicate a logical execution thread to sound alone, they're wasting an immense amount of processing power, unless they do some pretty radical stuff. Depending on the amount of control available over DirectSound's execution and threading (of which there likely is none), core sound processing may (and rightly should) still span across all logical processors, so that won't be something that will be handled by one core.

My assumption is that the audio engine will allow for four to eight simultaneous effects. Nothing radical, but more than enough to perform all but the most complex and realistic processes. It's always good to keep in mind that many sound events in a game will exist in a singular space, so sub-mixing multiple audio streams before performing processing is always going to be the preferred method. Four simultaneous effects sends should give you the capability to perform environment blending, multi-environment reverb and basic occlusion all at once with four sub-mixed audio streams. With more sends, you get the capability to start doing more effects that require per-event processing like accurate early reflections. With a software solution, you also have the capability to add sends as needed.

Unless you're seeking "studio quality" 'verb, you don't need much time on the processor. Like most game functions, audio processing is a constant process, so the performance impact should be fairly static. Not something you need a dedicated processor to do, that's for sure, unless you go nuts.

 

[pfunkman]

Well, first of all, I don't know how one can "optimize" for four logical processors. What Crytek is saying is that the engine will leverage four+ threads effectively, which just means the granularity is reasonable. Performance should be good on one, two or four cores, and the total number of threads created by the game may number in the hundreds regardless of the number of logical processors. Unless programmers have control over the scheduler, they have no control over thread dispatching.

As it sits now with dual cores you can tell a program to run on a core and tell another program to run on the other core and virtually its as if they have thier own processor, So why wouldnt you be able to tell one core to handle sound instructions one to handle physics etc.? technically thats how sound cards work anyway, the instructions are sent from the application to the sound cards processor and it handles it from there so why not just have the program send it to core X on the processor to take the load? It just seems more efficient to me if it works this way.

I think Crytek is doing something that will be extremely common here in a few years, like said before nothing out there really harnesses the duallys. Once more programs are able to use multiple cores in this fashion a new world of performance will be realized.

I may be wrong but thats how i see it going down. I hope im right because it will really show what dual cores are capable of .

 

[Arashi]

yea a similar thing was shown for Alan Wake..

you almost wonder if Quad Cores will move away from dedicated hardware again, the PPU and the hardware sound card maybe a thing of the past..


if the goal is to give the same experience to everyone (at least as much as possible) without regard to proprietary API's (eg.. you have to have hardware A to experience the game with certain options), then this a great thing for gamers..

finally software rendering again woot!

 

[MixBar]

one can only hope that more developers go the route of crysis..

The game crysis is promted by Microsoft. Bill Gates personally presented with this game the features of WinVista. Believe there is no way for the better OpenAL in such game.

 

[Cyrilix]

As it sits now with dual cores you can tell a program to run on a core and tell another program to run on the other core and virtually its as if they have thier own processor, So why wouldnt you be able to tell one core to handle sound instructions one to handle physics etc.? technically thats how sound cards work anyway, the instructions are sent from the application to the sound cards processor and it handles it from there so why not just have the program send it to core X on the processor to take the load? It just seems more efficient to me if it works this way.

I think Crytek is doing something that will be extremely common here in a few years, like said before nothing out there really harnesses the duallys. Once more programs are able to use multiple cores in this fashion a new world of performance will be realized.

I may be wrong but thats how i see it going down. I hope im right because it will really show what dual cores are capable of .

That's two different programs. We're talking about multithreading in one program. The methods that you'd do this are different.

 

[pfunkman]

That's two different programs. We're talking about multithreading in one program. The methods that you'd do this are different.

Exactly they would be different, but it is very possible for them to do this.

 

[Donnie27]

I think the point people are missing is that if the rumors are true DX10 will be far more efficient than 9 and previous. If thats true rendering sound on the CPU is very do-able. If games look better while using less resources why not pool those extra unused resources into sound processing anyway? Its not like crytek is a bunch of retards they are skilled devolopers and obviously have a plan to make this work well otherwise they would have taken the same lazy approach other developers have and fallen back on EAX and creative.

Its not crytek being lazy its all the other developers. From what i see they are trying to expand into different territories of sound options like people have been begging for, for years. If it works then great if not well at least someone tried...

It dont just suck for us being stuck behind EAX it sucks for devolopers too. you think they like having to devolop thier games to be able to use the latest EAX then having to develop them to use older EAX for people who have different cards etc.. The way it is now they have to figure in people that have creative sound cards, the various types of onboard sound and other manufacturers who dont even support EAX at all?? This way no matter what you have the sound is on one platform and they dont need to waste valuable resources spending time to get it working with 800 different varietys of sound cards etc.

First of all, no one is stuck. All games that support OpenAL and EAX have Fall back sound setups. Now you're saying only the fall-backs should be use because EAX is giving Creative a monopoly? Then what about OpenAL? You do know that nVidia and many others make up the OpenAL alliance, right?

Oh well, what in the hell should I expect from this forum? The most MISSED point of all is that OpenAL sounds BETTER. Why is that so hard to understand? It not about Processor vs. sound card, I'd love to use the 2nd Core of my C2D to process sound.

It's lazy when they DON'T use EAX, or OpenAL not the opposite as you say. Crytech or anyone else can expand all they want. Adding a 2nd or 3 sound engine isn't holding them back. Hell, look at how many different sound setups Unreal 2xxx supports? This Anti Creative BS has a lot you guys seemingly not thinking straight. Oh right, it sucks for Creative so it must be good way of thinking is kind of wacky!

Do you know you don't mention OpenAL even one time? Dewd, it is NOT just about EAX. Any game can use more than one Vista Based DirectX-10 sound scheme=P No, it is NOT good that it will be good for you because it sucks for Creative. I say Crytech and Anyone else should use MORE than one sound system and let US CHOOSE. Then if the forced feed MS stuff is better, then we CHOOSE it=P

 

[Donnie27]

http://www.openal.org/openal_vista.html

 

[pfunkman]

You do know that nVidia and many others make up the OpenAL alliance, right?

Yes i do but you do know that creative is part of that alliance?

I guess i dont understand your point...You agree that going this route is better for all or what? because thats all im saying. Just because Phide and I got into a discussion about utilizing CPU cores in different ways dont change that.

And yes we really are stuck in the gaming world behind EAX look around you...If you want high quality hardware accelerated surround sound in games whats the only real solution? You guessed it a creative card with EAX. What are my options? i could stick with onboard and EAX 2.0 and have a significant loss in performance and sound quality or i could buy a card from a different manufacturer and umm be in the same situation...

I like the way this is going with OpenAL this way there is more than 1 company that can manufacture sound solutions instead of 1.

And yes dude it has been lazy as hell for devolopers to continue falling back on EAX at any time a team of devs could have created something more accessible to everyone regardless of thier sound cards. Im not saying it shouldnt be included in games im just saying something a with a little broader user base should have been considered years ago.

Even looking at OpenAL its been around since 99 and is just now starting to see more common use due to Vista because devs have just been lazy falling back on EAX solutions.

Point is it has sucked for years being limited to creative for reasonable soud and performance in games I say its about time something changes because we all know competition is a great thing for consumers.

 

[Donnie27]

Yes i do but you do know that creative is part of that alliance?

I guess i dont understand your point...You agree that going this route is better for all or what? because thats all im saying. Just because Phide and I got into a discussion about utilizing CPU cores in different ways dont change that.

And yes we really are stuck in the gaming world behind EAX look around you...If you want high quality hardware accelerated surround sound in games whats the only real solution? You guessed it a creative card with EAX. What are my options? i could stick with onboard and EAX 2.0 and have a significant loss in performance and sound quality or i could buy a card from a different manufacturer and umm be in the same situation...

I like the way this is going with OpenAL this way there is more than 1 company that can manufacture sound solutions instead of 1.

And yes dude it has been lazy as hell for devolopers to continue falling back on EAX at any time a team of devs could have created something more accessible to everyone regardless of thier sound cards. Im not saying it shouldnt be included in games im just saying something a with a little broader user base should have been considered years ago.

Even looking at OpenAL its been around since 99 and is just now starting to see more common use due to Vista because devs have just been lazy falling back on EAX solutions.

Point is it has sucked for years being limited to creative for reasonable soud and performance in games I say its about time something changes because we all know competition is a great thing for consumers.

Yes i do but you do know that creative is part of that alliance?

Laughs, so that makes it bad uh?

That's easy, so being even more limited is good? Again, it is not a case of either or but also. Add the new Microsoft based stuff and OpenAL. The rest, well, you're off way the hell off. They're not Lazy, they're using what works=P

 

[pfunkman]

I wasnt saying it was bad in fact having the most experienced company in the computer sound world is a very good thing if you ask me. The difference is instead of being JUST creative its a collective approach so creative cant hold patents over everyone elses head.

How you can say sticking to just EAX isnt lazy is just something we will have to disagree on.

I am not trying to flame or fight here with anyone im just sharing my opinion and thats all it is. right or wrong to you its mine and ill keep it.

 

[phide]

Oh well, what in the hell should I expect from this forum? The most MISSED point of all is that OpenAL sounds BETTER. Why is that so hard to understand?

How so? The functionality of DS and OpenAL are extremely similar, and both are solely a means of interfacing with audio hardware. There may be some differences in precision along the pipeline, but these precision variations are generally imperceptible to all but the most well trained ear.

If you think that you made a factual statement here, please back it up. I'd be very interested to see what you can find concerning these so-called differences in sound quality.

It's lazy when they DON'T use EAX, or OpenAL not the opposite as you say. Crytech or anyone else can expand all they want.

Given a nearly unlimited budget and zero time constraints, yes. However, this is not the how game development works. If you spend some time keeping track of the business end of game development, you'll notice that all titles have limited budgets and time constraints. Nature of the beast here.

The Unreal Engine platform and the Crysis engine are also vastly dissimilar. They are both game engines, yes, but UE is the only platform that's also licensed. Licensed audio engines from RAD and the like can be integrated if the engine licensee also licenses the audio engine. For the UT series, and other games produced by Epic, Sweeney and co. have the option to ship with all integrated audio platforms very easily (and very cheaply).

When you develop one engine for one game, you design the engine around the fundaments of the game (and around the software/hardware available). You don't blow your wad on trivial extra goodies. The original incarnation of the Doom 3 engine, for example: no water. No water was needed for Doom 3, so it was completely left out. It saves time and money, and time is very expensive.

You can expect some developers to give us everything and the kitchen sink, and other developers not to. This is not a complex thing and certainly not something that should be complained about excessively.

This Anti Creative BS has a lot you guys seemingly not thinking straight. Oh right, it sucks for Creative so it must be good way of thinking is kind of wacky!

Dare I say that your unwavering alliance to Creative is clouding your own judgment?

You're intentionally misinterpreting what pfunk and I are saying and construing our words to suit your own twisted agendas (his especially). This is not appreciated here. If you want to play ball with us, please try to play the game the way we play it.

No, it is NOT good that it will be good for you because it sucks for Creative.

No, it's good because it's good for everyone. We all get to experience the same game.

JUST creative its a collective approach so creative cant hold patents over everyone elses head.

Creative Labs has been on the hot seat before for their patenting (and patent enforcement) practices. Anyone recall the Carmack's Reverse debacle? I'm not so sure Creative could have fucked id (and John specifically) over any more than they did. Deplorable.

Exactly they would be different, but it is very possible for them to do this.

I'm not a programmer, but I'm not so sure it is. Having access to thread propagation and having access to load scheduling are two very different things. I don't believe it's possible to determine which physical processor a thread flies on in C or C++, though I could be wrong. Hard to find information on this stuff.

finally software rendering again woot!

Direct3D is not proprietary in the same way that later versions of EAX is, so this is a silly sort of comparison, I think. There are a number of card manufacturers that support Direct3D (more than NIVIDIA and ATi), but there is only one audio card manufacturer that can execute EAX 3.0+ extensions.

 

[HSE]

OpenAL (or EAX) by itself cannot sound worse or better since it's just an API, a set of procedures that another layer has to translate and render into sound. A vendor's OpenAL specific implementation (hardware or software) is what will determine the quality at the end of the day, some vendors like Creative use elaborated HRTFs but others can implement it using just panning.

Now, regarding audio in the Cryengine, while I don't consider it's wrong for a developer to write their own sound engine with custom effects such as Doom3, it appears to me that they aren't doing such thing, that they didn't implement their own voice management, mixing and effects engine from scratch but they are relying on FMOD EX. So they didn't left aside OpenAL to scorn Creative or for the greater good of the installed base, but to use their middleware of choice that simplifies the sound subsystem implementation in PC and consoles.

The downside of relying on FMOD's effects as I see it is that, according to FMOD documentation, "FMOD Ex has its own high quality I3DL2 reverb solution in software, but may not be as flexible or have the quality of EAX4 for example". I3DL2 compliant means EAX2 level of functionality and that means that unless they coded EAX3+ functionality as plugins, the sound will not be in the same league as Battlefield 2.

 

[Obi_Kwiet]

If this means competition for Creative, I'm all for it. Their cards are ok, for the most part, but their drivers would have been me leave them long ago if there was a decent gaming alternative.