Valve wants to improve sound quality for virtual reality

While all the other major players in the VR market are looking for wireless solutions and are trying to improve the visual component of their projects, Valve has decided to seriously rethink the sound that plays an equally important role in virtual reality. After all, it is the sound that supplements the very atmosphere that allows a person to immerse himself in non-existent worlds and isolate himself from reality. And Valve engineers understand this perfectly.

The process has already begun, since Valve has released an SDK called Steam Audio kit for Windows, Linux, Mac and Android platforms. While the system works exclusively in Unity, the support of the popular Unreal Engine 4 and other engines is about to come out. What is the advantage of this sound system over the solutions already available on the market? The thing is that Valve specialists managed to implement the sound changes inside the game based on physics. It will change, encountering various obstacles in its path and taking into account the materials with which the walls and objects are covered.

Roughly speaking, the player will hear a changing sound depending on where it is relative to its source and what objects it surrounds. If the source is directly in front of you, then the sound will be clear and clear, and if you go around the corner - the sound will immediately change, becoming more deaf and quiet. It sounds pretty primitive, but in many modern video games the realization of the sound was much less impressive. Sony, for example, is also trying to improve the sound for virtual reality. Especially for this, together with the PlayStation VR headset, a "computational unit" is delivered, which turns the sound in the player's headphones into a binaural one (such as human ears perceive, taking into account their physical characteristics). The Steam Audio kit also supports binaural sound rendering based on the player's head in the virtual space.

We must assume that this system will be used not only in the world of VR games, but also in games that are quite ordinary, since the quality of sound atmosphere transmission improves at times. SDK can be downloaded from the manufacturer's website absolutely free already today.

The article is based on materials https://hi-news.ru/technology/kompaniya-valve-xochet-uluchshit-kachestvo-zvuka-dlya-virtualnoj-realnosti.html.