Ray traced audio acceleration is the latest gimmick on Microsoft's Xbox Series X console

[Redaktion]

Is Microsoft trying to prove that sounds exhibit the same wave-particle duality as light rays? Probably not. This is most likely a clever marketing gimmick that feeds off of the growing popularity of ray traced graphics and mainstream gamers are not even supposed to benefit from it.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Ray-traced-audio-acceleration-is-the-latest-gimmick-on-Microsoft-s-Xbox-Series-X-console.454763.0.html

[mvl]

Mark Cerny from Playstation also mentioned this technology in a interview with Wired.

Quoting: "If you wanted to run tests to see if the player can hear certain audio sources or if the enemies can hear the players' footsteps, ray tracing is useful for that," he says. "It's all the same thing as taking a ray through the environment." The AMD chip also includes a custom unit for 3D audio that Cerny thinks will redefine what sound can do in a videogame."

Therefore I don't think it's fair to classify this as an "Xbox gimmick", since PS5 will also very likely feature this too.

[Valantar]

Agreed. This article in general has a very oddly dismissive tone. It's not like ray traced graphics relate to the wave-particle duality whatsoever; it handily skips over this by simulating light as rays (directional beams, neither waves nor particles) originating from a source, travelling in a straight line, and reflecting/bouncing off objects in the world. It ought to be blindingly obvious that a simulation like this can be  transferred nearly 1:1 to audio - which also usually has a single source, travels linearly, reflects off objects, etc. Sure, sound bends easier than light, but that's about it.

[fliflipoune]

How do you think complex positional audio is happening in video games? Things like Wwise? It's by using tracing. Audio processing in a console (or in any videogames) is on a performance budget, so better acceleration can make for better environnemental audio.

I really fail to see why Notebookcheck is using such a dismissive tone simply by pure ignorance about audio in games. It's ok to not know everything, but it's a bad reason to take that kind of tone for no reason.

[Bduder]

Sony announced ray traced audio for PS5 a very long time ago. This just brings the XBOX up to par. And it will help with creating a mote realistic and immersive audio environment in the game, and you you won't need to have a crazy high end system to hear it. It's not exclusively about improving surround sound.

And agree with others, weird tone in this article. Wish the author would have taken a few minutes to inform himself of this tech and if the competition was doing anything similar, as clearly he is hearing about this for the first time.

[arkutor]

Fun fact: Any kind of wave can be approximated into rays by joining all the points on wavefronts where the tangents are parallel. You can in fact apply ray optics to waves by this method. This is a high frequency approximation (only works for very high frequencies) but there is nothing related to particle duality in this. Apart from being wrong, this article just goes to show that the author has literally no idea what they are talking about and just wanted to use some cool "sciencey" words. From a practical aspect, simulating waves is way more complicated that simulating rays, so assuming that sound is a ray is a very good way of approximating how sound behaves. This might be surprising to you but sound also bounces off of surfaces just like rays. Shocker am I right?

[DShort]

For raytracing images, from camera, you cast rays out into your scene and check properties on what they hit, material properties, angle and distance to a light source, if reflective or transparent you cast. More rays from there. You can do the same for each ear and see what sound sources are in direct line, blocked or bouncing about.

[t4n0n]

I suspect that, when he referred to the ray tracing capabilities of the new hardware being useful for sound processing, he didn't meant it in the most literal sense.

Without having definitive knowledge on the topic, I would guess that ray tracing would be a very poor approximation when it comes to simulating the propagation of sound waves, as acoustic propagation actually exhibits the very behaviour that undermines the use of ray tracing when it comes to light (namely, the wave property of each point in the wavefront being a source itself), only at a far more pronounced level, due to the fact that sound travels as a pressure wave and really has no "particle" analogy in the same way that light does.

There may be a grain of truth behind the claim, in the sense that the ray tracing core of the GPU happens to be particularly amenable to whatever kind of instructions might be used in the audio processing pipeline, but I would imagine the analogy ends there and perhaps the marketing BS begins...

[Harris Mirza]

Nvidia also does this (VRWorks Audio) , it's far from a gimmick. It's obviously not going to be 100% accurate but provides a good approximation.

[Bogdan Solca]

I'll admit that I was not aware that PS5 is going to include this feature, but the point of the article is to see if this could be of any use to the average gamer. It does not really matter if it is featured on both consoles when the technology itself does not actually do what it is supposed to do, at least for the average gamer.

Also, whoever thinks that they might know better what this technology entails, do not kid yourselves. It is too new, no one knows the exact details. Sure, there are similarities between rays and sound waves, that's what I tried to convey in the second paragraph. Moreover, I'm not an expert and I'm not trying to sound like one (the sciency language is used sarcastically here), but I did look up some pointers from sound experts, who seem to agree that the average gamer will not benefit from any of this without high-end speakers or headphones, because the limitations are in those pieces of hardware, not in the ray tracing hardware integrated in the consoles.

[Valantar]

I'll admit that I was not aware that PS5 is going to include this feature, but the point of the article is to see if this could be of any use to the average gamer. It does not really matter if it is featured on both consoles when the technology itself does not actually do what it is supposed to do, at least for the average gamer.

Increased realism in game audio really wouldn't be that complicated with this method, and would be very noticeable. Sound in games is generally extremely simple - most in-game sound has a point source, travels in straight lines from this source in any/all directions, and is occluded only by large pieces of geometry. It does not bounce, does not bend around corners, and does not change relative to the motion of the listener. All of which are behaviors exhibited by sound in the real world, and which would be easily corrected for with ray traced audio. Having the sound of an opponent moving change if they move behind a bush or other small piece of geometry would make a major difference. As would sound bending realistically around corners, bouncing off objects, etc. This can have a very significant real-world impact on the perceived realism of the game, and on immersion. Dismissing this outright just shows a lack of imagination on your part, or lack of insight into how sound in games works.

Also, the point of your article is clearly not to "see if this could be of any use to the average gamer" but rather to outright dismiss the possibility of this without any evidence, all in a highly sarcastic tone for some reason.

Sure, there are similarities between rays and sound waves, that's what I tried to convey in the second paragraph.

It might have been what you tried to convey, but it is by no means what you actually conveyed. What you did convey was a dismissive and seemingly uninformed knee-jerk reaction to something without any sign of actual reflection on its potential effects or intended usage. It's all well and good to be skeptical of someone proclaiming a new tech to be revolutionary without any proof, but no such claims were made (only that it was new - which it actually isn't, it just hasn't been used much). Your response, both in the tone and content of the article, go far beyond reasonable skepticism and it all comes off as some sort of sarcastic rant based on your own annoyance and nothing more.

While it's true that audio devices do put limits on just how realistic 3D audio can be, modern spatial audio standards like Dolby Atmos have clearly demonstrated that there are major strides to be made beyond the traditional ways of doing audio. Of course, Atmos being for prerecorded audio is very different than real-time in-game audio, but at least it does demonstrate that you can have increased perceived realism from increased spatial dynamics and resolution in audio. Also, modern "fake headphone surround" tech is surprisingly good, delivering actual directional audio through just two ear-mounted speakers by modulating the sound in various ways, so there's little indication that we can't improve upon this by improving how audio is generated in the first place. Especially if this is done through a heavily integrated hardware-software solution that moves past traditional X.0/1 channel counts and treats audio as actually existing in 3D space (whether it's 2.0, 5.1 or 7.1, it's all 2D).

Saying that the playback device will ultimately limit the quality of the experience is by no means whatsoever the same as saying that the current experience can't be dramatically improved. Shitty headphones will still give you shitty sound, but shitty 3D sound with improved spatiality will still be better than shitty 2D sound from the same headphones in games that can benefit from it.

I don't mind sarcasm in journalism, but there's a time and a place for it - mostly limited to someone making extravagant, unrealistic claims with no backing. This isn't that.

[Eric Lavallee]

Hello, I am the lead developer on The Missing Few and I am using Wwise's Stochastic Ray Casting Spatial Audio. Audiokinetics Wwise audio engine allows developers to use Stochastic Ray Casting to generate realistic environments in 3d, without the need for special hardware or headphones. Your typical 60$ razor headphones even at 2-channel will work with this system. 

Here is my recent blog regarding Ray Traced Audio for My Game The Missing Few.

indiedb.com/games/the-missing-few/news/devblog-5-the-missing-few-ray-traced-audio

[SegaSonictechguy]

I wanna see this author post the same kind of article as a gimmick for ps5 if he doesnt then its clear hes a Sony fan boy and was trying his best to somehow show Xbox Series X at 12 Teraflops which is more powerul by almost 2 Teraflops than PS5 by trying to point out Raytracting audio as a gimmick When Mark Cerny himself was prattling on about 3d Audio which is also a simulated audio experience and can never mimic real life audio. In fact in he stands by his opinion then he has to post another article where the Title in bold letters just like this one  states 3d Audio another Sony PS5 gimmick or Im calling this Xbox article sabotage and pure biased