OpenAL
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| Original author(s) | Loki Software |
| Developer(s) | Creative Technology |
| Stable release | 2.1.0.0 [1] / February 1st, 2010 [2] |
| Operating system | Cross-platform |
| Type | API |
| License | LGPL |
| Website | connect.creativelabs.com/openal |
OpenAL (Open Audio Library) is a free software cross-platform audio API. It is designed for efficient rendering of multichannel three dimensional positional audio. Its API style and conventions deliberately resemble that of OpenGL.
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History
OpenAL was originally developed by Loki Software in order to help them in their business of porting Windows games to Linux. After the demise of Loki, the project was maintained for a while by the free software/open source community — and implemented on NVIDIA nForce sound cards and motherboards; it is now hosted (and largely developed) by Creative Technology with on-going support from Apple, Blue Ripple Sound, and free software/open source enthusiasts.
Whilst the OpenAL charter says that there will be an "Architecture Review Board" (ARB) modeled on the OpenGL ARB, no such organization has ever been formed and the OpenAL specification is generally handled and discussed via e-mail on its public mailing list.
API structure and functionality
The general functionality of OpenAL is encoded in source objects, audio buffers and a single listener. A source object contains a pointer to a buffer, the velocity, position and direction of the sound, and the intensity of the sound. The listener object contains the velocity, position and direction of the listener, and the general gain applied to all sound. Buffers contain audio data in PCM format, either 8- or 16-bit, in either monaural or stereo format. The rendering engine performs all necessary calculations as far as distance attenuation, Doppler effect, etc.
The net result of all of this for the end user is that in a properly written OpenAL application, sounds behave quite naturally as the user moves through the three-dimensional space of the virtual world. From a programmer's perspective, very little additional work is required to make this happen in an existing OpenGL-based 3D graphical application.
Unlike the OpenGL specification, the OpenAL specification includes two subsections of the API: the core consisting of the actual OpenAL function calls, and the ALC (Audio Library Context) API which is used to manage rendering contexts, resource usage and locking in a cross platform manner. There is also an 'ALUT' library that provides higher level 'convenience' functions — exactly analogous to OpenGL's 'GLUT'.
In order to provide additional functionality in the future, OpenAL utilizes an extension mechanism. Individual vendors are thereby able to include their own extensions into distributions of OpenAL, commonly for the purpose of exposing additional functionality on their proprietary hardware. Extensions can be promoted to ARB (Architecture Review Board) status, indicating a standard extension which will be maintained for backwards compatibility. ARB extensions have the prospect of being added to the core API after a period of time.
For advanced digital signal processing / hardware-accelerated sound effects the EFX (Effects Extension) or EAX can be used.
Portability
The API is available on the following platforms:
- Mac OS X
- iPhone OS
- GNU/Linux (both OSS and ALSA backends)
- BSD
- Solaris
- IRIX
- Microsoft Windows
- Xbox
- Xbox 360
- AmigaOS 3.x
- MorphOS
Applications
Games:
- id Tech 3 and 4 engine-based games such as Doom 3, Jedi Knight 2, Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, Quake 4 and Prey
- Unreal Engine 2 and Unreal Engine 3-based games such as Unreal II: The Awakening, Unreal Tournament 2003, Unreal Tournament 2004, Unreal Tournament 3, Postal², and America's Army
- Battlefield 2, Battlefield 2142, Freedom Fighters, Hitman, Psychonauts, Colin McRae: DiRT, Penumbra: Black Plague, Race Driver: GRID, Colin McRae: Dirt 2, Wurm Online
- Numerous free software/open-source games also use OpenAL. Some examples include Bitfighter, FlightGear, War§ow, Warzone 2100, and Osmos.
Other applications:
- Blender - 3D modelling and rendering tool uses OpenAL for its built in game engine.
- Unity - 3D game engine and game creation IDE.
- 3DMark06 - Gamer's benchmarking tool.
- Dolphin (emulator) - Gamecube and Wii emulator
A more exhaustive list can be found at the OpenAL website.
See also
- Environmental audio extensions
- OpenGL
- GLUT
- OpenSL ES
- OpenCL
- OpenML
- FMOD
- cAudio
- ALUT
- ALURE
- List of computer standards
External links
- Official site
- OpenAL Soft
- DevMaster.net OpenAL Tutorials (Note: these tutorials are showing their age slightly by, for instance, using deprecated functions such as alutLoadWAVFile)
- Rapture3D advanced OpenAL 1.1 driver
References
- ^ http://forums.creative.com/t5/Sound-Blaster/OpenAL-2-1-0-0-now-available/td-p/548634
- ^ http://support.creative.com/Downloads/searchdownloads.aspx?filename=XFHP_PCDRV_LB_1_01_0001.exe
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