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Poll: ** The AMD VEGA Thread **

On or off the hype train?

  • (off) Train has derailed

    Votes: 207 39.2%

  • (on) Overcrowding, standing room only

    Votes: 100 18.9%

  • (never ever got on) Chinese escalator

    Votes: 221 41.9%
  • Total voters
    528
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Mauller said:
The reason why hardware accelerated 3D audio was killed off was all down to Creative. Microsoft were ready to standardise a 3D audio pipeline, but Creative essentially killed that off when they destroyed Aureal through lawsuits. After Creative destroyed Aureal, they bought them up and did nothing with the tech, which was far superior to creatives EAX at the time, since Aureal performed True 3D first order reflections and convolution reverb based upon a games assets and environments.

X-Fi cards don't perform 3D environmental audio acceleration, all of their 3D audio is just clever surround mixing and predefined reverb effects. It has nothing to do with the games actual environment.
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The full environment modelling version of A3D was never released - they did some demos and sent some stuff to game developers - IIRC the last public release only used a simplified version of the game geometry without any proper modelling of surface materials - I can't remember details now but I think they just grouped geometry surface together per area as different pre-baked types for reflections, etc. (not talking like EAX that just used a pre-baked filter per area for all sounds without modelling the environment).
 
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Rroff said:
The full environment modelling version of A3D was never released - they did some demos and sent some stuff to game developers - IIRC the last public release only used a simplified version of the game geometry without any proper modelling of surface materials - I can't remember details now but I think they just grouped geometry surface together per area as different pre-baked types for reflections, etc.
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A few games launched with or had A3D 2.0 patched into them after launch. It was the one that could perform up to 60 first order reflection calculations.

Half-Life was also a big game that supported A3D 2.0, I remember there being a lot of fuss with people wanting A3D banned in Counterstrike since it could give you a massive tactical advantage.

List of all the games that supported Aurel 3D and the versions they supported.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/fido7.su.hardw.pc.sound/PgmPUN2OAeA
 
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Mauller said:
A few games launched with or had A3D 2.0 patched into them after launch. It was the one that could perform up to 60 first order reflection calculations.
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Yeah but IIRC that only used simple level geometry and no proper per surface modelling of materials i.e. in a given area all surfaces would modify sound in the same way - compared to the version they were working on when Creative killed them off that had lots of different surface types and more complex modelling of world geometry.

EDIT: http://www.worknd.ru/a3d30ref.pdf page 18 onwards has a great description of how it works.
 
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Rroff said:
Yeah but IIRC that only used simple level geometry and no proper per surface modelling of materials i.e. in a given area all surfaces would modify sound in the same way - compared to the version they were working on when Creative killed them off that had lots of different surface types and more complex modelling of world geometry.
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Yeah I get what you mean, I think that was a feature that was going to be incremental to 2.0 and something the 2.0 supporting cards could use. but they never got to release it to devs.

The main thing was having the first order reflections, it makes such a difference to game sound. It is ridiculous how AMD can put on their side that current setups are fine for flat monitor gaming when it comes to TrueAudio Next. Some people have made examples of using TrueAudio Next in unity, it makes a huge difference.
 
Mauller said:
Yeah I get what you mean, I think that was a feature that was going to be incremental to 2.0 and something the 2.0 supporting cards could use. but they never got to release it to devs.

The main thing was having the first order reflections, it makes such a difference to game sound. It is ridiculous how AMD can put on their side that current setups are fine for flat monitor gaming when it comes to TrueAudio Next. Some people have made examples of using TrueAudio Next in unity, it makes a huge difference.
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Yup - I heard a demo of A3D 3.0 using a modified Quake 2 engine the difference is huge - I really hope something like this gets pushed. Annoying thing is it seems nVidia picked up some of the Aureal engineers but no idea where they are now and doesn't seem nVidia has done much with them.
 
opethdisciple said:
Why do we have no PCB leaks, box pictures.... Performance leaks etc?
Screams of paper launch!
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According to a leak a fair few pages back regarding schedule, the reference RX Vega has only just passed its working sample stage i.e. all the launch hardware and software have been installed in the same rig inside the AMD test lab. According to the schedule Mass production starts after August 2nd, so I would expect box shots and leaks after the first week of August.
 
Besty said:
According to a leak a fair few pages back regarding schedule, the reference RX Vega has only just passed its working sample stage i.e. all the launch hardware and software have been installed in the same rig inside the AMD test lab. According to the schedule Mass production starts after August 2nd, so I would expect box shots and leaks after the first week of August.
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That can't be right or they won't be hitting the market with any volume before Christmas.
 
Rroff said:
Yup - I heard a demo of A3D 3.0 using a modified Quake 2 engine the difference is huge - I really hope something like this gets pushed. Annoying thing is it seems nVidia picked up some of the Aureal engineers but no idea where they are now and doesn't seem nVidia has done much with them.
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Steam Audio and TrueAudio Next perform Wavetracing and take surface materials into account. The demos on youtube that people have made are without materials for Steam Audio, but there is a true audio one, but its a bit cruddy the demo.
 
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