Meta XR Audio Plugin for FMOD - Getting Started

This section will cover how to install the Meta XR Audio SDK and prepare a project to use it.

By the end of this document, you’ll be able to:

The first step to get started using the Meta XR Audio Plugin for FMOD is to install the FMOD Studio from their website. You can select the right version of FMOD after creating an FMOD account. To create an account, click Sign In > Register to follow the prompt to set up an account.

The minimum SDK version that we support for this plugin is:

We also test the plug-in works in the latest version of FMOD for each release. The plugin may work in versions earlier in than the minimum version, but there is no support provided for that use case.

You’ll also need to download the FMOD plug-in from the Meta Horizon Developer Center. The download contains a pre-built, release-optimized plug-in for all the supported platforms (Windows, Mac and Android/Quest) for each of the major releases of FMOD versions we support.

Once downloaded, extract the .zip to a local folder on your machine.

There are two ways to add plugins to FMOD, you can either add it to your project or add it to FMOD Studio. In either case, you will copy the same files, but the destination folder will be different.

To install the plug-in such that FMOD Studio can find and use it while authoring sound banks, you need to copy the following files:

Note that there are two different .js file options. This is because in FMOD Studio 2.02.00, the min / max distance slider option was introduced as a native feature for events in FMOD. If you are using an earlier version of FMOD, choose the .js file in the “2.01.23-and-earlier” folder which will have a min / max distance slider on Meta plugin itself. If you are using 2.02.00 or later, choose the .js file in the “2.02.00-and-later” folder which will remove the min / max distance slider from the Meta plugin in favor of the native control.

If you are just adding the plugin to your project, create a subdirectory inside your FMOD Project directory named “Plugins” and copy the above files to the directory you created.

If you are adding the plugin to FMOD Studio, copy the above files to the destination folder “C:\Program Files\FMOD SoundSystem\FMOD Studio {version}\Plugins” for Windows. On Mac, you should copy the files to “Applications\FMOD Studio.app\Contents\Plugins”. These are the expected default installation paths for FMOD Studio but keep in mind you may have selected a different location during your installation.

The first step to get started using the Meta XR Audio SDK plugin for Unreal is to install the Unreal Engine using the Epic Games Launcher. Epic Games provides a full set of instructions on how to set up and account and navigate to the download for your desired version here.

The minimum Unreal Engine version that we support for this plugin is:

We also test the plug-in works in the latest version of Unreal for each release. The plugin may work in versions earlier in than the minimum version, but there is no support provided for that use case.

The downloaded SDK package contains a sub-folder titled “Unreal” and inside it the plugin is found at “MetaXRAudio”. You can either copy the plugin to “UnrealEnginePath\Engine\Plugins\Marketplace" to add it to your engine and make it available to all projects, or copy it to “YourProjectPath\Plugins” to make it available only to a specific project.

Note that you should not install the plugin for both the engine and a project as this is not recommended by Epic Games. Also note that you should not have multiple instances of different Meta audio plugins both active. For example, don’t install both the Meta XR Audio Wwise for Unreal plugin and the Meta XR Audio FMOD for Unreal plugin at the same time.

In your Unreal project, the first thing to do is activate the Meta XR Audio plugin so that it becomes available for usage. Navigate to edit > plugins and find the Meta XR Audio plugin in the list of available plugins as shown below and make sure it is checked:

You may need to restart the editor for this change to take effect.

The plugin is always pre-built with the latest version of Unreal Engine. When you try to load the plugin in an earlier version of Unreal, it will recognize the difference and ask if you want to rebuild the plugin for this version. In most cases you can confirm this and it will automatically rebuild without issue. If it fails to automatically repackage the plugin for your version you can run the following script included in the Unreal Engine to repackage it:

C:\Program Files\Epic Games\UE_5.3\Engine\Build\BatchFiles\RunUAT.bat BuildPlugin -plugin="C:\Downloads\MetaXRAudio\MetaXRAudio.uplugin" -package="C:\temp\MetaXRAudio"

In the above command make sure the path to the RunUAT.bat file matches the version of the Unreal Engine you’d like to package for, the plugin arguement matches the path to the MetaXRAudio.uplugin file on your directory, and the package arguement is a valid output path to place the result at.

Follow FMOD’s provided instructions to install their plugin for Unreal at FMOD to Unreal installation guide.

Follow FMOD’s provided guide to ensure your project is setup and has the MetaXRAudioFMOD libraries copied to FMOD’s required paths to find the MetaXRAudioFMOD plugin.

Now that the project is set up and the plugin is ready to use, proceed to learn about how to use the features in the SDK:

To follow step-by-step instructions on how to use the Meta XR Audio SDK you can also view the Example Tutorial.