I am needing to have support for both the Oculus Spatializer and the 3D Panner as a switchable audio setting within the game for headphone and speaker use. As the Oculus Spatializer requires that the 3D Panner be removed, I’m wondering what is the best way to go about building my project and banks.
It seems that I will need two separate events for every 3D sound event. Would it best to build it for two different PC platforms, and have the Oculus banks be stereo, and the regular speaker option be 7.1? And since this is all technically the same platform, both sets of banks would need to be shipped with the game, doubling the file size that audio is consuming, correct?
Thanks in advance for any insight you can provide.
The solution we currently recommend for your situation is to create two different versions of the project - or, as you suggest, two different versions of each 3D event in the same project. As you say, this will require two versions of affected banks.
An upcoming feature is the ability to disable effects on a per-platform basis, which will allow you to more easily use a single project for multiple platforms. This feature will become available in an upcoming major version.
To follow up, do events with the Oculus Spatializer HAVE to be on banks with a “stereo” speaker mode build? Would it work to simply have one Desktop platform that is in 5.1 or 7.1 and have both types of events on the same build, since the spatializer will only output in 2 channels anyway?
Awaiting the next major release! Perhaps we can take advantage of this feature for the next game…
If the audio assets aren’t in stereo format, the signal will automatically be downmixed or upmixed to stereo format for the spatializer. Both downmixing and upmixing typically result in a noticeable change to the quality of the sound. Whether that change is acceptable depends on the requirements of the project.