Beta testers wanted for new Renderers.

[Dr.Flay]

IMPORTANT NEWS

As of 27th Jan 2016, UT99 now has another even newer renderer for newer graphics cards, thanks again to Smirftsch
If you have a card that can make use of an XOpenGL OpenGL3 / OpenGL4 renderer, then head over to OldUnreal and try the new Beta
http://www.oldunreal.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/ ... 453909937/

Oldunreal Media Pack - OMP 0.99b

Smirftsch has not forgotten his UT loving cousins

Anyone wanting to test the new DirectX, OpenGL and audio renderers should head over to OldUnreal and grab a copy.
http://www.oldunreal.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/ ... oard=Sound
http://www.oldunreal.com/utpatches.html

Feedback on the tweaks suggested in the forum, and especially on the NEW "SwFMod" audio renderer, are most welcome.
These may become the new UT99 standard renderers, so please contribute if you find any problems.

The new renderers are OpenAL, FMOD, SwFMod, D3D8, D3D9, and OpenGL.
A new "Default.ini" file is included.
They will work on any version of Windows, though Windows 8 users may have to update their sound drivers.
"SwFMod" may become a good solution for Linux.

http://www.oldunreal.com/wiki/index.php?title=OpenAL
http://www.oldunreal.com/wiki/index.php?title=FMOD
http://www.oldunreal.com/wiki/index.php ... 3D8_/_D3D9
http://www.oldunreal.com/wiki/index.php ... _templates
A wiki has not yet been made for "SwFMod", but you can find the reference here http://www.oldunreal.com/wiki/index.php ... ease_notes


UPDATE

OpenAL 1.1

Smirftsch has just released the latest pin-point accurate OpenAL beta 1.1, so it may be a good time to try out the EFX, and it really benefits from being in a well zoned map.
I've been adding them to my fave maps since first testing them in both Unreal and UT maps, and they really enhance the whole Unreal experience.
http://www.oldunreal.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/ ... 1399614690
They are just drop-in zone actors, so even placing them with existing zone actors is quick.
However sometimes trying to decide what the acoustics of the area should be, can have me scratching my chin when editing someone else's map.

Version 1.1 from latest 227j development for UnrealTournament, Windows version.

Changes:
Switched in OpenAL from FMod Music output to libxmp.
This player is not only free and open source (GNU LESSER GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE), but better portable and is yet actively maintained unlike most other players. It also plays some tracker files "more correctly" than old FMod3. OGG playing is now done directly via ogg vorbis (BSD-License).

Added CrossFading ability in OpenAL when using MTRAN_Segue
Added ability to play sounds in OGG format (you need to rename the .ogg files to .wav to allow the import)

Changed from Creative Labs OpenAL to OpenALSoft to eliminate problems with non Creative cards in Windows 7 and Windows8

ZoneEFX.png

Obviously the OpenAL files become required (very small), but thankfully it will not stop people using any renderer they prefer (they just don't hear it like the directors original cut...or any OGG playback).

The new renderers make it much easier to track the source of sounds and footsteps, and are even better with surround sound.
Sounds bounce more naturally around objects to give much more realism.
In default mode I think it is set to emulate the behaviour of the original renderer, but you can enable the sound attenuation and "original" factor with a few config switches.

OpenAL 2.2 UPDATE
https://www.ut99.org/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=6329

[UnrealGGecko]

Downloaded, will check it out after skool. Is there a readme there?
Is there XP support?

[Dr.Flay]

No readme yet.
And no they are not specific to any version of Windows.

I'm going to add a little more info to the post.

[Shadow]

Do they have any new useful features or properties?

[Raynor]

What codebase does this OpenGL renderer use, Dohnal's? Gonna definately try those audio renderers.

Edit:

Well, after some quick testing there are still same old issues. Just for the record, I use Creative X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Pro (what a silly long name) sound card under 64-bit Windows 7.

Here are my results:

ALAudio - muffled player sounds, too loud announcer voice, weapon sfx seems fine (just like Galaxy).
FMod - muffled weapon (especially noticeable with Pulse Gun's secondary fire) and player sounds, announcer voice volume is OK.
SwFMod - noticeable delay in weapon sounds (sfx plays approximately 0.5 seconds later after weapon is fired), muffled sound effects.

Is there any documentation available that details each setting for those audio renderers?

At this point I still find Galaxy audio renderer to produce most interference free sound and music effects.

[Dr.Flay]

Well I know the video renderers have a few fixes (like solving the issue of masked textures being transparent).
The Oldunreal thread has some useful examples of the changes.

Yes I think they are based on G.Dohnal's renderers. Will have to check.

The only useful docs for the audio, are the 2 wiki pages I linked in the first post.
Cool features such as
bSoundAttenuate [True/False]: - Attenuate Soundsources which are behind walls etc.
is very very cool. eg. walking past a door or opening will sound different. Shooting out a window will let the sound through the new opening.
I hope the EAX zones can also be used the same way as in U227i, as it makes adding environmental audio very quick.

Smirftsch is the one to direct questions at, as things will happen far quicker if you do.

It is probably worth adding the new defaults to your main UT ini file, and/or the default.ini and resetting to those before tweaking.
I am guessing Smirftsch has chosen them as a good start point.

These audio renderers have more output options which can solve some problems.
The default is to use DSOUND but you can try WINMM or A3D
Hardware and Software modes will sound different anyway.

SwFMod has a whole load of extra options to play with, but Smirftsch's SampleFormat default of PCMFLOAT may not suit everyone.
Hopefully a wiki will be written for it.

[noccer]

Flay:

The swFMOD is very cool, i didn't think ut can sound like that

It would be a good upgrade, but ace is kicking for this :/
Admins should whitelist it

[Dr.Flay]

Yeah I left a comment in the ACE forum the other day.
http://www.unrealadmin.org/forums/forum ... .php?f=177
I didn't notice this until recently.
Rather slack that the new renderers are still not included after all this time (8 months later).

[Ðàrk-_¦_-Ñìght.:]

These things do not work under Windows 9x because Smiftsch uses the newer Visual Studio that deprecates backwards compatibility for stupid unreasonable reasons.

I'm still getting stupid stuttering and mouse lag issues with his compiled renderer's as a result I'm still sticking with d3d10drv. Can someone elaborate what SwFMOD is? Casey said it was "Software FMOD" but... FMod is inherently software to begin with, also FMod's "HardwareMode" relies on Dsound3D as such will not work on anything past Windows XP because Microsoft decided to throw out the audio HAL that provided hardware mixing for compatible devices.

EDIT: A3D will only obviously work on Vortex 1/2 cards which only worked on Windows 98 to begin with, and given how these .DLL's are linked in a way that they are incompatible with Win 9x... it's stupid to even think of using that option. I've tried looking for information on getting the cards to work on XP but all I found were drivers that... wait for it.. DISABLE AUDIO ACCELERATION AND ALL A3D FEATURES! Because it apparently kept BSOD'ing the OS.

Way to go Microsoft for causing a massive split for no real reason. This is why I compile my stuff with MinGW32 or some other toolkit that still allows me to compile against Win9X.

[Dr.Flay]

Personally I would recommend, to use the D3D10 renderer if you can, because it can do some truly funky stuff with bumpmaps and and lighting.
Creavion has shown me jaw-dropping stuff that made me want to patch my XP again (did not work, as the ATI XP driver does not install the extra DX10 stuff.)
The "before and after" shots on Kenties site and the ones Crev showed me, beat UT2004 (but then nobody made replacement renderers for 2K4).

SwFMOD is experimental (still no wiki page), and It has a lot more options to tweak. They all work a treat on my XP box with nForce2 audio.
It should be noted that according to the wiki, software rendering is supposed to give the most accurate to original UT sound effects (not sure about the new SwFMOD).

To be honest, on my old AMD 2500, 32bit single core. Rendering 4 channels of 16bit, 48k audio in software, does not make the PC sweat.
Swapping between HW and SW, gives me no noticeable difference in FPS.

BTW anyone else noticed the official OpenAL sites no longer exist

[Feralidragon]

Yeah, the DX10 is actually very good from what I have seen in the screenshots (I have yet to try it). I am actually planning to make good use of it for a future project of mine.
I just wished that he fixed something Creavion and I found out (I found the functionality, and Creavion tested it, didn't work, and the author seems to be aware of it now): bump mapping in meshes.

In his page he says it works, but it really doesn't apparently.

[Raynor]

Don't know about you guys, but last time HDR with kentie's D3D10 was pretty messed up. Lightning was inaccurate in various (stock) maps, sometimes too dark or changing from place to place.

[Ðàrk-_¦_-Ñìght.:]

Creative has since abandoned OpenAL development, their latest soundcards don't even support hardware mixed audio... (From what I've read anyways, feel free to correct me on this one)

Creative seriously needs to become a victim of a hostile takeover of a company that would actually DO something with the A3D technology, bring it back to use and make a much better audio HAL than OpenAL ever was. Hardware audio mixing makes a *BIG* difference in video games when it comes to sound latency, quality and a slew of other things. Software processed audio in something that real time is just idiotic especially if you want environmental effects like HRT's, attenuation and occlusion, and complex reverb\echo.

Unless you're a pro at x86 assembly and using something like ASIO to bypass the crappy Windows Audio Session API (which imparts a massive latency far worse than KMixer ever did), you're still going to end up chewing around 5% to 12% CPU just for decent audio playback in a real time game like Unreal and such.

Of course I'm a nutcase when it comes to real time audio so feel free to ignore me.

I think kentie may of gotten a job in real life so that may be the reason why he's put d3d10drv on hiatus, still the source is available if anyone including myself would want to try to fix any bugs it currently still has. The only problem is getting visual studio to cooperate with you and debugging might be nearly impossible to do properly.

[Dr.Flay]

*cough*
Someone we know, is already in conversation with Kentie again, so possibly we may see a DX10 update in the near future

And, oh if only we had ASIO access in the audio renderers.
That would be worth a dance of joy.

[Ðàrk-_¦_-Ñìght.:]

ASIO drivers are a pain in the ass to get working, but ASIO4ALL will work 99% of the time... If anyone uses that and were to have jerry rigged a ASIO output for Unreal, the only way to get that to work all the time is to "disable" your sound card in Windows 7\Vista. That way the kernel streaming method will not be blocked by any open program happening to hold a handle on your audio device.

ASIO would essentially be the same deal as MS-DOS audio. Latency on the order of magnitude of nanoseconds rather than hundreds of milliseconds. Though this type of latency would only really be useful for music authoring there is still the advantage of actually talking directly with the audio device rather than have Windows 7's resource hog of a "audio stack" do it for you.