OpenAL EFX Effects
Posted: 08 Aug 2022, 00:03
Right now OpenMW only uses reverb when under water. OpenAL EFX has support for a whole plethora of audio effects. Is there a possibility for reverb support? It can start basic with simply tagging a cell as a reverb value and any audio in that cell uses that value. A more complex system would be audio volumes with their own audio effect settings that could be placed in the CS (like how it's handled in Skyrim). With an audio volume system someone would have to go in and add volumes for the base game if you want the functionality out of the box, or leave it up to modders. Further down the line support could be added for audio occlusion (as a tag in CS for placed sounds to allow ambient sounds to function) or even add an audio material system based on texture or a tag on the model.
Another possibility that I don't believe is supported out of the box with OpenAL (based on skimming the documentation) would be some sort of realtime audio system that determines the scale of a room or area and calculates the reverb value based on that, but that would be much more complex to implement, probably best left to modders if such a system would be possible with just mods.
I don't know the extent that would be required to add a reverb system, but doppler could be added as a basic flag that you can switch in settings.
With even just the HRTF as of now, the game sounds incredible, I just feel that leaning in to the full extent of OpenAL could drastically improve the game's audio beyond what was possible in the original.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgO630WNudc
This is someone using software drivers to force enable EAX reverb on Morrowind, the game doesn't support reverb so it uses a uniform value everywhere. Even though its not intended, it shows how much reverb can add to the atmosphere of the game. I wish I had the programming ability to get this working in OpenMW, but sadly I don't.
Another possibility that I don't believe is supported out of the box with OpenAL (based on skimming the documentation) would be some sort of realtime audio system that determines the scale of a room or area and calculates the reverb value based on that, but that would be much more complex to implement, probably best left to modders if such a system would be possible with just mods.
I don't know the extent that would be required to add a reverb system, but doppler could be added as a basic flag that you can switch in settings.
With even just the HRTF as of now, the game sounds incredible, I just feel that leaning in to the full extent of OpenAL could drastically improve the game's audio beyond what was possible in the original.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgO630WNudc
This is someone using software drivers to force enable EAX reverb on Morrowind, the game doesn't support reverb so it uses a uniform value everywhere. Even though its not intended, it shows how much reverb can add to the atmosphere of the game. I wish I had the programming ability to get this working in OpenMW, but sadly I don't.