GDC: Audiokinetic Announes Wwise 2007.1, Gamebryo Integration

Audio solution provider Audiokinetic has announced the latest version of its audio pipeline solution Wwise available later this spring, as well as a new partnership with Emergent Game Technologies that will embed Wwise into the the company's Gamebryo Element. The most important feature of the new Wwise 2007.1 version is the addition of interactive music, which allows the creation of sophisticated musical structures and the management of the transitions between them by using a powerful transition matrix. Users will be able to check their work real-time and make adjustments without programming intervention. The new version also has a redesigned positioning system which will provide more flexibility over sound propagation for the sound designers, and independent attenuation curves for the Dry volume, Wet volume, Low frequency effect volume, Low pass filter and Spread factor. The Spread factor, says Audiokinetic, allows sounds to change over distance from “Point Source” to a completely “Diffused” propagation in the 5.1 field. A new 2D panner is also available now to discreetly pan sounds anywhere in the 5.1. Finally, the new version improves PlayStation 3 support with SPU-based audio processing that enhances performance and drastically reduces PPU overhead. Responding to the growing needs for complete audio solutions in game development, Audiokinetic has also announced a new partnership with Emergent Game Technologies to integrate Wwise into Emergent's Gamebryo Element game engine. Said Emergent VP of product development Doug Kubel, “Wwise has the best audio tools in the game development industry. Our customers will benefit from Audiokinetic’s technology being directly integrated with the Gamebryo Element.” Added Audiokinetic president and CEO Martin H. Klein, “Our partnership with Emergent will provide us with the opportunity to impact all aspects of game development, as well as to learn more from them. This will allow both companies to push the overall gaming experience to endless possibilities.”