Applications and Tools, Virtual World Platforms

Dolby Sound for MMOs and Virtual Worlds

Dolby, one of the leading entertainment technology companies in the world, has announced its immersive 3D voice communication platform.

According to the Dolby press release, the 3D voice experience will be “clearer, more realistic, and more immersing.” (We’ll let it slide that I think they mean ‘immersive.’)

The technology is called Axon, and Dolby has made available software development kits to the public.

“We want Dolby Axon to be the voice platform of choice for the most innovative and creative game developers in the world,” said Matt Tullis, Senior Manager, Games Market, Dolby Laboratories.

You can read more here about the tech specs of Axon, but here are a few intriguing things we noticed:

- the use of an ‘occlusion engine’ that allows voice communication to respond to ‘game geometry.’
- the addition of voice fonts (voice attributes using game characters)
- massive scalabilty, supporting thousands of users per server
- low bandwidth usage.

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