[1662 Steam Audio Beta] Audio sources close to head not panned hard enough
tracked
MuffinTastic
- Set VRChat to the Steam Audio Beta branch
- Join a world with audio sources on moveable objects, or have a friend who talks join you
- Move an audio source (or said friend) extremely close to one ear
- Note that the panning is not nearly as strong as it is on Live or Open Beta
Some difference is to be expected, but there's basically no panning whatsoever. This issue negatively affects existing worlds (ASMR worlds), interactions between users, and overall immersion for extremely close sounds.
Video demonstration
Live / Open Beta: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loT2W_NsQbM
Steam Audio Beta: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWKZ36DU4Xg
World: wrld_4bfde0c0-9941-4fe0-aab8-7819c9ec7db6
Log In
-WildCat-
I believe this issue is caused by a lack of
near-field rendering
.The Oculus Native Spatializer Plugin (ONSP) that VRChat uses on the Live branch supports near-field rendering, but it appears that Steam Audio doesn't.
An overview of Meta's approach is discussed in this article:
Steam Audio is open source, so I imagine that a simulation of near-field effects could be implemented.
Importantly, such a system would need to be scaled based on the user's avatar scale. I remember when VRChat first implemented avatar scaling, and one of the first things I noticed was that ONSP's near-field rendering was not being scaled accordingly, causing the spatialization to sound really weird at very small avatar sizes. I never got around to testing whether they ever fixed that.
StormRel
tracked