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| Creative Adds OpenAL 1.1 to Sound Blaster Sound Cards Creative has announced that OpenAL 1.1 will be available for Sound Blaster sound cards this spring to provide compelling audio playback and hardware acceleration in PC games developed for Windows XP and Vista. OpenAL 1.1 (Open Audio Library) and Creative's Interactive Spatial Audio Composition Tool (ISACT) enable game developers to implement stunning 3D audio in PC, Xbox, and Xbox 360 games. The Sound Blaster X-Fi family of sound cards provides hardware acceleration in PC games so audio processing is offloaded from the PC CPU. With this additional processing power, users typically notice increased frame rate speeds. In addition, hardware acceleration can deliver far more precise 3D positional placement of sounds in-game, including elevation, along with real-time, stackable 3D effects such as reverbs, occlusion, and environmental morphing. Hardware acceleration can deliver all of these high-quality 3D effects to end users regardless of which headphones or multi-channel speaker configuration they choose. OpenAL 1.1, an upgrade for the free API, OpenAL, will feature three primary improvements over the current version: audio recording functionality for use with in-game voice chat; an offset feature that will allow developers finer control over audio playback; and additional volume fall-off models that will save developers effort in customizing their audio engine. write your comments about the article :: © 2006 Computing News :: home page |