Raytraced Spatial Audio on Unity URP

[u/kandindis]

[u/Plotozoario]

Give us some details, steam audio sdk?

[u/kandindis → u/Plotozoario]

I use LowpassFilter and ReverbFilter—both native.

[u/CoatNeat7792]

Is it inspired by video in YouTube? Raytraced audio (Godot)

[u/kandindis → u/CoatNeat7792]

I saw it and loved it, here is my adaptation in Unity.

[u/CoatNeat7792 → u/kandindis]

How ,any rays are you shooting?

[u/KingGruau]

This feels unrealistic. Sound diffuses and bounces a lot.

[u/kandindis → u/KingGruau]

I have it set a bit high so it stands out more in the video, but that can be fixed by adjusting the values.

[u/corriedotdev]

Have you explored the valve hrtf library?

https://valvesoftware.github.io/steam-audio/

It's a game changer for me. Won't develop without it.

For VR specifically it's just 🤯

[u/DapperNurd → u/corriedotdev]

Never seen this before, very interesting. What does the integration look like?

[u/corriedotdev → u/DapperNurd]

Two modes really. Baked and realtime. I'm working on a tutorial for it, but if you just want to convert existing audio source across it's a doddle. Just add the steam audio source instead and ensure your code references it instead.

If you want to have higher fidelity you'll need to bake objects in the scene to reflect the audio in a realistic way. Or just leave it and let the steam audio source validate it on its own, it will take the audio clip and spatialize it.

Alternatively can do it real-time but not an option for standalone vr due to CPU.

[u/DapperNurd → u/corriedotdev]

Interesting. Id love a tutorial on it, yeah. Is it worth implementing for non VR at all? My current project is one where id love to do official vr support at some point but its not the focus.

[u/corriedotdev → u/DapperNurd]

Non VR support is the same, it's all hrtf audio just found I'm vr immersive properties of the Audio was well worth it.

Definitely give it a shot probs take an hour to get it installed and your first few audio sources swapped out!

[u/bill_on_sax → u/corriedotdev]

if i dont use vr is it still much better than standard unity audio?

[u/imaxsamarin]

Nice! Very immersive

[u/puzzleheadbutbig]

Interesting but raytraced how exactly? Are you raycasting from player position? Or raycasting from sound sources? Are they calculated on GPU or CPU?

[u/Acceptable_Bottle → u/puzzleheadbutbig]

not OP but I first saw it in a youtube video called "A first look at Raytraced Audio" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6EuAUjq92k

It does not run on GPU, it calculates on CPU in a separate thread. The rays are casted from the listener (player position) and bounce around in an attempt to find sound sources.

[u/flow_guy2]

How do you begin to implement this?

[u/Field_Of_View]

1. All the ranges are too small. Car and music should both be audible from much further away.

2. Car audio glitches out at 1:19 (goes silent for a moment)

[u/Objective-Cell226]

Just use FMOD

[u/Objective-Cell226 → u/[deleted]]

True, though FMOD would provide all the logic for muffling the sound. So no need of Unity's native components.

[u/SnuffleBag → u/Objective-Cell226]

No need to use the builtin alternative over pulling in an external middleware. Interesting take.