Immersion is a defining aspect of VR experiences, encompassing a combination of several factors that deliver greater feelings of presence and heightened sensation when compared to traditional 2D screens. While stunning visuals are often the first thing people notice, the importance of high-quality audio cannot be overstated. Accurate audio simulation has the power to produce 360-degree soundscapes that expand the virtual environment beyond the player's direct line of sight, transforming immersive environments into truly believable experiences.
To help you achieve accurate audio simulation, we’ve launched new
Acoustic Ray Tracing (
Unity |
Unreal) capabilities as part of the Audio SDK. These capabilities give you the tools to increase realism, deepen engagement, anchor players in virtual worlds, and bridge the gap between remote multiplayer participants by giving the impression that they occupy the same physical space.
Typically, acoustics are implemented by developers with bespoke ad-hoc systems that use game logic to drive audio system parameters. They can often achieve basic occlusion and obstruction and apply different reverb presets for different areas, but this manual approach tends to be labor intensive, complicated and brittle.
While some solutions exist on the market to achieve highly accurate levels of acoustics simulation, these are intended for PC and console development, and are often too resource-intensive to be suitable for mobile VR hardware.
Now you can leverage the new Acoustic Ray Tracing features in Audio SDK to easily create realistic acoustics for virtual environments in Unity and Unreal. Simply load the virtual environment in the game editor, tag the relevant geometry, and follow a set of simple steps to automatically generate an accurate acoustic model.
We’ve worked to streamline this process to empower developers and designers with minimal experience in sound design to create authentic acoustics. Our system is powerful enough to handle large, complex environments with ease, performant enough to target Meta Quest mobile devices, and simple enough that artists can use it without requiring engineering expertise.
Dive in below to learn more about these exciting new features, how to implement them, and example use cases.
Acoustic Ray Tracing features in Unity project
Overview of Acoustic Ray Tracing features
Our new Acoustic Ray Tracing features are designed to simulate high-quality audio acoustics with incredible accuracy. By pairing these capabilities with our existing spatial audio functionality, you can create environments that sound as real as they look. The result is a more believable and immersive experience for users that keeps them engaged and present within their environment.
Virtual environments sound real
These new capabilities deliver room acoustic simulation by accurately modeling reflections and reverberations, which are essential for creating a sense of space and depth. When sound waves bounce off surfaces and return to the listener, it can provide important spatial cues about the size and shape of the environment.
Built for any environment you create
Our acoustics features can handle arbitrarily complex geometry, ensuring that even the most intricate environments are accurately simulated. Whether your VR scene is a winding cave, a bustling cityscape, or an intricate indoor environment, our technology can manage the complexity without compromising on performance.
Complex game geometry can be given accurate acoustic simulation
Sound waves propagate realistically
Sound reflections are a core aspect of authentic audio experiences, but our technology goes a step further to enable sound that adapts dynamically in real time. It can simulate advanced propagation phenomena such as diffraction, occlusion, and obstruction. Diffraction allows sound to bend around obstacles, occlusion models how objects block sound, and obstruction simulates how sound changes when it passes through different materials. These phenomena are crucial for a realistic audio experience, especially in complex environments. The underlying technology is very similar to the approach used in ray-traced graphics rendering.
Material acoustic properties
In the physical world, different materials interact with sound in unique ways. We’ve engineered Acoustic Ray Tracing to replicate this authenticity through the ability to represent the acoustic properties of various materials, such as brick, carpet, glass, and wood. This means that a carpeted living room will sound very different from a concrete warehouse, adding another layer of realism to the audio experience.
Performant on Meta Quest headsets
One of the standout benefits of our new acoustics features is their performance on mobile hardware. While other solutions in the market require powerful PCs due to their high performance cost, our SDK is optimized to run efficiently on mobile devices such as Quest headsets. This opens up new possibilities for high-quality audio simulation in mobile applications, making immersive audio more accessible than ever before.
Example use case: Immersive gaming
Accurate acoustics can create situational awareness and add tactical elements to competitive games. For example, users can hear the footsteps of their opponents echoing down the hall and around the corner, giving them a clear sense of position even without line of sight, allowing them to sneak into a corner and set up an ambush.
Using sound to create a tactical advantage in an immersive multiplayer game
Example use case: Co-Presence
For social and multiplayer apps, accurate acoustics (along with spatial audio) applied to speech can really enhance the feeling that other people are really in the environment with you. Acoustic Ray Tracing enables speech to adapt according to objects and space, deepening the sense of presence and togetherness in these experiences.
Feeling together with friends and family, regardless of distance
Integrate with your existing workflow
We understand that ease of integration is crucial for developers. That's why our
acoustics features are designed to work seamlessly with existing workflows in
Unity and Unreal game engines. Additionally, we support popular audio middleware
solutions (FMOD and Wwise), making it easier to incorporate our technology into
your projects regardless of how you like to work.
To help you get started, we’ve provide complete documentation (
Unity
|
Unreal)
that covers everything from basic setup to advanced features. Additionally, we
are developing sample projects to serve as practical examples and best practices
for integrating these new acoustics features into your own apps.
Developed in partnership with AAA studios
These advanced Acoustic Ray Tracing features are already being used to create
more immersive experiences in upcoming AAA games such as
Batman: Arkham
Shadow, developed by Camouflaj and slated for release in late 2024.
Collaborating with real-world VR game developers has allowed us to enhance the
robustness and quality of our technology, offering a feature set tailored to
meet their needs. We look forward to introducing Quest gamers to our Acoustic
Ray Tracing in the world of Gotham City, and we can’t wait to see how you
leverage these capabilities to drive innovation in your own projects moving
forward.
Start building realistic, adaptable audio experiences
Acoustic Ray Tracing features offer you the tools you need to create immersive
audio experiences that feel nearly indistinguishable from the physical world.
From simulating room acoustics and advanced propagation phenomena to handling
complex geometry and accurately representing material properties, these features
provide a comprehensive solution for realistic audio in VR. With seamless
integration, complete documentation, and efficient performance on mobile
hardware, you have everything you need to achieve new levels of immersion and
push the boundaries of immersive audio.
Get started today by downloading Audio SDK (
Unity
|
Unreal)
and visiting the documentation for Acoustic Ray Tracing (
Unity
|
Unreal).
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