Return to Castle Wolfenstein w/ 3D spatial sound in iortcw 🎧 (OpenAL Soft HRTF audio)
28https://github.com/iortcw/iortcw/releases
Use headphones only with any virtual surround features turned off.
As a nice little bonus during this Quake week, here's Return to Castle Wolfenstein with 3D sound in iortcw. ID Software never released a true single-player Quake game on IDTech 3, but this Wolfenstein update more than made up for it. To this day, I'd still call RTCW the best game in the entire series due to its rich mix of retro and modern gameplay elements. Yes, I even like the stealth in this game which is why for this demo, I decided to take the stealth route on the iconic first level.
iortcw seems to use a variant of ioquake3's 3D positional audio engine. It feels like distant sounds are a bit less accurate than ioquake3, but in return it has vertical HRTF. I really like how easy it is to pinpoint exactly where enemies are in relation to you with iortcw's binaural audio. Developers of modern stealth games would be wise to take notes from this recording, especially at 7:25.
Despite my love for iortcw's sound, I'm actually not fond of this engine. In a previous build I tried years ago (1.42b), iortcw was prone to crashing. I couldn't even get past the 2nd level because it would persistently crash at the part with the sniper. iortcw also runs horribly if you choose the "High Quality" video preset. I had to set it to "Medium" and then manually raise all the options myself just to get a smooth 125FPS.
(I'd also like to point out that while several sources list RTCW as an Aureal A3D-compatible game, it actually isn't.)
HRTF grade:
A
Settings:
Windows Control Panel: Stereo
seta com_maxfps "125"
r_customwidth "1920"
r_customheight "1080"
r_mode "-1"
seta r_customaspect "1.777777777777778"
cg_fov "115.63"
seta cg_crosshairSize "12"
IRC_1037 HRTF tables placed in %APPDATA%/OpenAL/HRTF
(in alsoft.ini located in %APPDATA%)
channels=stereo
frequency=44100
stereo-mode=headphones
cf_level=0
sample-type=float32
periods=3
period_size=1024
default-hrtf=irc_1037_44100
hrtf=true
Links:
http://kcat.strangesoft.net/openal.html
http://recherche.ircam.fr/equipes/salles/listen/
Credits:
https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/apps/9010/header.jpg?t=1529533790
(Use of this logo falls under fair use laws.)
#3dsound #spatialaudio #binaural #3daudio #360audio #8daudio #hrtf #headphones #audiophile #gameaudio #mod #wolfenstein
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