<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class="">Interesting!<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Somewhat related 3d audio: There was a recent episode of the Audionowcast podcast (<a href="https://www.nowcastnetwork.com/NowcastNetwork/nfblog/?p=1007" class="">AudioNowcast May 5, 2022 episode 228</a>, around the 25 minute mark) in which they talked about Fiedler Audio’s Spacelab plugin. It is a 3d audio object reverb, developed in cooperation with Fraunhofer. The demo’s (binaural, on headphone) are quite fun, although some didn’t quite work for me.<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Ben</div><div class=""><br class=""><div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On 30 Jul 2022, at 17:47, cheater cheater via Synth-diy <<a href="mailto:synth-diy@synth-diy.org" class="">synth-diy@synth-diy.org</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><div class="">Hi all,<br class="">there was recently an AMA with ray tracing experts at nvidia and I<br class="">asked about uses for audio. I thought the possibilities could be<br class="">interesting for some people here. Below is the link to the original<br class="">thread as well as a copy of the question and answer.<br class=""><br class="">Cheers<br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><a href="https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/meet-the-ray-tracing-gems-team-live-ama-july-28-2022/217920" class="">https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/meet-the-ray-tracing-gems-team-live-ama-july-28-2022/217920</a><br class=""><br class="">-------------------------------------------------------------------<br class=""><br class="">Welcome to our first Connect with Experts - AMA, an exclusive benefit<br class="">of the NVIDIA Developer Program 12<br class="">The team behind the popular Ray Tracing Gems 23 will be here live on<br class="">July 28, 2022 at 10am (PDT) to 11am<br class=""><br class="">Eric Haines, Adam Marrs, Peter Shirley and Ingo Wald,<br class=""><br class="">Post questions - watch the discussion - ask the team anything.<br class=""><br class="">-------------------------------------------------------------------<br class=""><br class="">Could you please talk about how ray tracing and RTX could help<br class="">realistic sound in sound-oriented games, in the context of the<br class="">gameplay of the original Thief game, to give a concrete example?<br class="">Effects such as realistic reverberation, sound occlusion, the carrying<br class="">of sound by continuous surfaces, and others are all of benefit here.<br class="">Are there current approaches to such problems which will still allow<br class="">ray tracing the graphics at the same time?<br class=""><br class="">Here is an example of gameplay: https://youtu.be/4rWfb7ZtSPc?t=8855<br class="">(Thief Gold | 1080p60 | Longplay Full Game Walkthrough No Commentary -<br class="">YouTube)<br class=""><br class="">-------------------------------------------------------------------<br class=""><br class="">Answer from Ingo Wald (iwald):<br class=""><br class="">First off: “IRL” sound is important to judge directions - you can<br class="">absolutely hear what direction something is coming from - so<br class="">simulating that better in a game should help make this game “feel”<br class="">more realistic, and better. On the technical side, sound transport and<br class="">light transport are - conceptually - actually very similar; though<br class="">there’s differences in “how” things reflect you still need frequent<br class="">“line of sight” computations, which are exactly what ray tracing does<br class="">- so yes, having fast ray tracing should help in making sound<br class="">simulation better/more accurate.<br class=""><br class="">Eric notes two things: VRWorks - Audio | NVIDIA Developer is from<br class="">NVIDIA and may be just what the poster wants. For more on research in<br class="">the area, a good place to start might be “Guided Multiview Ray Tracing<br class="">for Fast Auralization” by Micah Taylor, Anish Chandak, Qi Mo,<br class="">Christian Lauterbach, Carl Schissler, and Dinesh Manocha, 2012<br class=""><br class="">Response from Tony Scudiero:<br class=""><br class="">There’s a good history of ray tracing in audio: there are a number of<br class="">commercial products that use ray methods for generating synthetic room<br class="">impulse response filters. RTX technology is actually very good for<br class="">acoustic simulations, as the material interactions of sounds are<br class="">usually modeled at a coarser granularity than interactions of material<br class="">and light. Acoustic simulations tend to have simple shaders, making<br class="">their performance fundamentally a function of ray-scene queries, which<br class="">RTX accelerates quite well!<br class=""><br class="">One of the fundamental challenges of ray tracing acoustic energy is<br class="">that the wavelengths in question are about 1 million times longer than<br class="">visible light. Wavelengths can be on the order of a meter, which is<br class="">the same order of magnitude as many objects. The consequence is that<br class="">many effects must be treated over a cross-sectional area of the<br class="">wavefront: the interaction of sound energy with a surface cannot be<br class="">accurately modeled only at an infinitesimal point. That said, there<br class="">has been some research on how these effects can be treated using ray<br class="">tracing techniques. The ‘right’ approach usually depends on your<br class="">goals: accuracy or speed.<br class=""><br class="">From a technological perspective, there’s absolutely nothing standing<br class="">in the way of writing a real-time acoustics simulation using ray<br class="">tracing graphics APIs like DXR or VkRay to do sound propagation<br class="">simulation in tandem with ray tracing graphics. The available<br class="">ray-tracing power of current-generation GPUs should be able to handle<br class="">a moderately complex acoustic simulation in tandem with graphics.<br class="">Depending on how the graphics rendering engine is designed, primary<br class="">rays could be used for both purposes, further economizing the<br class="">simulation. While this is perfectly possible, I’m not aware of anyone<br class="">that has actually done this in one of the graphics APIs.<br class=""><br class="">NVIDIA’s VRWorks Audio, which is a relatively simple acoustics<br class="">simulation intended for interactive experiences, uses OptiX. Version<br class="">2.0 of that SDK can make use of RTX hardware when available.<br class=""><br class="">_______________________________________________<br class="">Synth-diy mailing list<br class="">Synth-diy@synth-diy.org<br class="">http://synth-diy.org/mailman/listinfo/synth-diy<br class="">Selling or trading? Use marketplace@synth-diy.org<br class=""><br class=""></div></div></blockquote></div><br class=""></div></div></body></html>