Overwatch with 3D spatial sound 🎧 (Dolby Atmos HRTF audio)

Channel:

I Drink Lava - 3D Game Audio

Subscribers:

2,150

Published on November 26, 2018 7:09:06 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaSP24gEgc4

Game:

Overwatch 2 (2023)

Duration: 15:03

3,479 views

29

Use headphones only with any virtual surround features turned off. Best HRTF effect at 5:30.
WARNING: I am a huge noob and I make some really dumb mistakes...keep your mouse hovering over that dislike button at all times.

0:00 - Match 1 (Ana)
9:13 - Match 2 (Ashe)

This is a demonstration of Overwatch's built-in Dolby Atmos headphone HRTF. I honest to God never thought I'd do this video. Pretty much everyone already knows about Overwatch's HRTF capabilities. Hell, I swore I'd never even touch Overwatch unless it went F2P (give Fortnite another year). Since my channel has become an archive for spatial sound technology and there's no specific demonstrations out there on Youtube, though, I figured I'd produce a half-assed video while the Thanksgiving trial went on.

First things first: Dolby Atmos does NOT downmix Atmos speaker placement information into headphones like some people claim. It uses the actual 3D positional audio data from Wwise and filters it through an HRTF plugin. This distinction is important, as some games like Star Wars: NuBattlefront use the Atmos speaker format instead of the HRTF filter.

Dolby Atmos HRTF is a lot like Overwatch itself: bland, watered-down, and done better by other companies. When it comes to "average head" HRTFs, you're always playing with fire, but that's not the reason why the binaural audio sucks. The problem is that there's no sense of three-dimensional space. You might be given a vague clue of where a sound is coming from, but you have no idea where it is in relation to yourself. Generally, this means you will not know an enemy is approaching from behind until they actually damage you. It's very sad, since the whole point of HRTF is to avoid situations like this. When two teams converge at a single point, the audio becomes a complete mess (13:50). Dolby Atmos also makes the sound quality really hollow.

I really don't get why people praise this game's sound design so much. Everything sounds so weak and muffled. Team Fortress 2's sound might not have been perfect, but at least you felt like a badass when you fired the Scout's shotguns or the Soldier's rocket launchers. The sound mixing is terrible, which I'm beginning to suspect is a problem with Wwise itself.


HRTF grade:
D

Links:
https://www.dolby.com/us/en/categories/games/overwatch.html
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/t/overwatch-ptr-patch-notes-november-14-2018/250302

Credits:
https://1000logos.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/overwatch-logo.png
(Logo copyright Activision-Blizzard. Use of this logo is protected under fair-use laws for non-commercial usage.)
https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/4j954c/overwatch_fonts_italic_and_regular/
(Use of this font falls under fair-use laws for non-commercial usage.)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/82/Logo_Dolby_Atmos.svg/2000px-Logo_Dolby_Atmos.svg.png
(Logo copyright Dolby Laboratories. I do not claim any ownership of this logo. Use of this logo is protected under fair-use laws for non-commercial usage.)



#3dsound #spatialaudio #binaural #3daudio #360audio #8daudio #hrtf #headphones #audiophile #gameaudio #overwatch #dolbyatmos
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