Whither OpenAL?

delYsid asks: "About a year ago, Slashdot had a story about the OpenAL project by Loki and Creative. There was much hype around it. But if you check their website now, the last changelog entry appears to be from December of 1999! Does anyone know of a good (preferable platform independent) library for 3D audio? The only answer I get when I ask professionals in this field is DirectX. I'd love to have my app under Linux instead of having to move to Win again. Any pointer or hints about the current status of OpenAL? Are there any alternatives?" Update: 09/18 15:33 PM GMT by C :Corrected the link which referred to Slashdot's previous story on OpenAL.

I forwarded this question on to Loki, and here's the response from Scott Draeker, president of Loki Games:

As you can imagine, everyone is pretty busy right now, especially as we had some folks out on vacation the last couple of weeks. So I'm sorry about the slow response.

In answer to your question, work on OpenAL continues. Creative has already added EAX and hardware acceleration to the Mac and Windows versions, and are working on adding both to the Linux implementation as well. Work is also continuing on an OS X port as well as other OSes. OpenAL continues to be the sound API which Loki uses in all of its products, and many other companies are either using or evaluating OpenAL for their products as well.

Hope that helps.

So there you have it, straight from the source. Development is progressing, although it's likely to be a bit slow at present. Here's hoping we'll hear more updates on the progress of OpenAL, over the next 6 months. Thanks a bunch for taking the time to answer, Scott!

Comments

Rock Music

[the_other_one]

In the old days we made sound by banging stones together.

I'm seeing massive code red attempts today...

[Anonymous Coward]

At least a few hundred in the past two hours. Also, the following URL from a machine that attempted to infect my linux box :) has a JS popup that serves up a version of the worm called "readme.eml".

Check it out:
http://www.webit-solutions.com/

Track down other stuff

[Ed Avis]

This is nice, but couldn't Ask Slashdot deal with things a little closer to home?

'Anonymous Coward writes: A few years ago, Slashdot had several comments by the user MEEPT!. There was much excitement around it. But if you check the site now, the last MEEPT! comment appears to be from December of 1999! Does anyone know of a good (preferably non-goatsex-infested) site for such comments? The only answer I get when I ask Slashdot users this question is to be moderated (-1, Offtopic). I'd love to read Slashdot instead of having to move to Kuro5hin again. Any pointer or hints about the current status of MEEPT!? Are there any alternatives?'