OpenAL Audio Library Released

Straker Skunk writes, "Loki, in conjunction with Creative Labs, has announced OpenAL, an LGPL'ed audio library for 3D sound generation. It's aimed for use in games as a cross-platform, nonproprietary means of accessing the 3D sound features on many newer sound cards. What's especially cool about it is that the API is designed with the same style, philosophy, and polish as OpenGL. Given enough time, it might very well become just as popular. " I've always been a fan of Loki and it's great to see them supporting the community - someone also sent an interview with Michael Vance, one of the developers behind OpenAL, who talks about the development of OpenAL and how it compares to other sound offerings.

Comments

Loki raises the bar again

[Skyshadow]

IMHO, out of all the commercial Linux-product (as opposed to distro maker) companies out there, Loki is probably doing the most to promote the standards of OSS.

Think about it: How many companies jump onto the Linux bandwagon and just toss out a couple of closed-source programs? How much easier would it be for Loki not to release their stuff?

In short, thanks, Loki.

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A first look

[mav[LAG]]

Nice looking library with lots of potential. It's about a 500k download and compiles out of the box on my RH 6.0 installation. There's no INSTALL and the configure scripts are lurking in the OS-specific directories but they work fine. Make and make test work fine - make install doesn't but I haven't checked why. All the test programs run like a charm on this SB Live! Value and some of them are pretty damn impressive.
From the ./docs/specification.html file:

OpenAL includes several separate sub-libraries:

• AL - core audio library services, including specifying listener orientation; environment geometry and material characteristics; sample data; and source orientation, radiation, and other characteristics.
• ALU - a utility library for AL which provides functionality for doing sample conversion, preset material properties, and a compatability layer for doing simple stereo audio from within AL's 3D spatial framework.
• ALC - a platform specific library for managing OpenAL contexts, including resource sharing, locking, and unlocking. This includes, but is not limited to, ALC/Linux and ALC/Windows.
• ALUT - a cross-platform library for creating an OpenAL context, with support for simple file loading. It also provides a simple API for accessing CD audio.

  It looks like the developers have thought carefully about the spec and managed to combine a clean API with lots of flexibility. Environments can be defined in terms of geometry and materials and "listeners" can have position, velocity and orientation, leading to all sorts of cool stuff like doppler effects and sound radiosity. And yes, if you know OpenGL it takes about ten minutes to get your head around OpenAL.
  Great job Loki.