Steam Audio announced by Valve

[Candescence]

So Valve bought out a 3D audio company recently, and they've been investing in and working on 3D audio as part of their VR push... And now they're releasing the fruits of their efforts to the public for free. And it's the sort of thing you don't need special audio hardware for, just a pair of headphones or a surround sound setup.

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What is Steam Audio?

Steam Audio adds physics-based sound propagation on top of HRTF-based binaural audio, for increased immersion. Sounds interact with and bounce off of the actual scene geometry, so they feel like they are actually in the scene, and give players more information about the scene they are in.

Official site: https://valvesoftware.github.io/steam-audio/

Steam community post with demos: http://steamcommunity.com/games/596420/announcements/detail/521693426582988261

 

This is probably the biggest development for 3D audio since Aureal back in the 90s. Unfortunately, the 3D audio push in the 90s was killed off by Creative strangling Aureal to death via litigation (that Creative lost but Aureal couldn't withstand the financial hit) and the push towards OpenAL and Microsoft basically killing dedicated 3D sound cards, and gaming audio has been much worse off for it for over a decade until more recently.

[Polkadi~☆]

Dolby Atmos, Steam Audio, any kind of 3D sound... It's required in this world, and thank god we're getting more of it.

Credit where credit is due, Valve pushes technology again. If only they pushed games again, but that's another matter.

Look forward to seeing this in games.