Sound in Virtual Reality. Creating interactive audio in the game

What the talk is about

Andrew Shcherbak explains how sound in virtual reality differs from audio in regular games and film, using a scene from his team's game. Spatial audio in VR works in three dimensions, so players hear distance, direction, height and space, and sound sources are placed in fine detail, such as separate ones for a large dinosaur's mouth, chest and footsteps. Interactive objects like doors or a gramophone handle can be moved any way the player likes, so a single recording is not enough: in Wwise, layers of looped sounds and creaks are tied to a parameter driven by rotation angle. He also shows an in-house occlusion system where obstacles block sound, and a character voiced through separate sources on the body. In the Q&A he covers memory load, splitting sounds into banks, and balancing loudness. Useful for sound designers and VR developers.