Wwise 2019.2 is out and available for you to download from the Wwise Launcher. Here's a quick summary of the new features this version brings.
Profiler Filtering
When looking at a Capture session, it is not uncommon to have a lot capture data visible at a given time, making it difficult to pinpoint the specific information you want to investigate. The filtering toolbar gives you the ability to narrow your search and focus on the sound, problem, or project area that you're interested in. Filter criteria can be applied globally across all profiling views or locally within a specific view and can also be reset or synchronized at any time. Additionally, the Mute/Solo filtering allows to "see only what you hear" when profiling in order to leverage your ears, while filter expressions can further narrow the results. The combined strength of these filtering methods brings unprecedented organization and navigation of your capture data.
A filtering toolbar can be found of the following views:
- Voice Monitor
- Voice Explorer
- Voices Graph
- Voices
- Game Sync Monitor
- Game Object 3D Viewer
Profiler Filter Toolbar
The filtering toolbar enables you to reduce the amount of information displayed in the view and focus on the elements that are relevant to you.
- Unlink Filter: Allows you to enable or disable synchronization between filters from different profiling views.
- Text Filter: Allows you to filter content by specifying the text. The specified words will be matched with the beginning of names or strings found in content. Each additional word refines the results. This match is not case sensitive.
- Object Filter: Allows you to filter content by specifying the Wwise object. The specified Wwise objects, from the project, are used to match content from the view. Additionally, object relations, such as parent-children relations and output bus relations, are also used to match content.
- Browse Object Filter: Shows a Project Explorer browser to select an object to filter.
- Mute/Solo Filtering: When activated, the objects with Mute activated are removed from the results, and the objects with Solo activated are displayed exclusively.
- Reset Filter: Clears all filters, including the text filter and the object filter.
- Options: Displays additional actions.
Filter Expressions
Filter expressions provide the ability to include, exclude, and use wildcards in conjunction with text, game objects, bus, and events. This enables you to create complex filtering schemes and further reduce the scope of what's visible, as you refine and navigate what is seen across profiling views. Navigating the capture data with filter expressions, either globally across all of the profiling views or locally within a specific view, affords the flexibility to navigate the information in a way that brings greater focus to the project.
The text in the filter searches for the following object names, by default:
- Bus
- Sound
- Event
- Play Target
- Effect
- Game Syncs
- Game Object
For more information on Filter Expressions see Using Profiler Filter Expressions.
Game Sync Monitor
The Game Sync Monitor has been updated to show Game Sync values for playing voices over-time, on a per-game object basis. The need to explicitly add RTPCs to the Game Sync Watches list has been removed, and now displays all RTPC values set on currently playing game objects. A "view everything and filter the results" philosophy is at the core of Profiler Filtering and allows for swift navigation of capture data for a quicker and clearer understanding of your project.
Game Object 3D Viewer
The Game Object 3D Viewer has been redesigned to leverage the full spectrum of capture data while providing the same profile filtering available in the rest of the profiling views. Additionally, the functionality to filter Game Objects by name and pin these Game Object filters so they persist across profiling sessions, allows for a workflow that can easily be repeated.
Profiler Views
Voice Monitor
The Voice Monitor now includes a redesigned filter bar.
Voice Explorer
The Voice Explorer displays the playing voices for the current cursor time set for the profiling capture session. The voices are organized by playing instance, where each playing instance corresponds to an Event being posted. For example, calling PostEvent twice on the same Event generates two playing instances in the Voice Explorer. The Voice Explorer offers display options to create rows for the Game Object, Event name, and Event target.
Voices Graph
The Voices Graph now includes a redesigned filter bar.
Spatial Audio
The Audiokinetic Spatial Audio team has been hard-at-work enhancing the authoring capabilities for realistic simulation of dynamic reflections and complex negotiation of diffraction.
New Reflection Engine
Stochastic ray-tracing now underpins the propagation pathing for reflections and diffraction, simultaneously increasing scalability while optimizing performance. From a runtime perspective, high order reflection or diffraction can now be used with less of a performance impact, thanks to this new path-finding algorithm. 4th order reflections are now achievable!
Per-Sound Reflections & Diffraction in Authoring
Spatial Audio properties can now be defined on a per-sound basis, allowing the author to choose which sounds are sent to the specified Reflect Aux Bus and whether diffraction is enabled. Previously only configurable from the game editor and limited to a per-game object basis, this update unlocks the ability to apply and fine tune spatial audio independently of the other components of a sound hierarchy.
"Early Reflections" added to General Settings tab
"Enable Diffraction" has been added under "3D Position" in the Positioning tab
Sound Transmission Model
Sound can go through walls. Rooms or geometry (per-triangle) now expose an occlusion factor which filters the direct path from the emitter to the listener. Additionally, the wet path now diffracts around geometry edges.
4th & 5th Order Ambisonics
Wwise now supports the playback of 4th and 5th order Ambisonics audio sources and channel configuration on busses for runtime encoding.
Support for Meshes
Unreal: No longer limited to geometry primitives, the new AkGeometry component applies surface reflectors on either static or collision meshes and automatically maps physical materials to acoustic textures.
Unity: Meshes can now have an Acoustic Texture for each rendering material. Previously, the Unity component for spatial audio geometry (AkSurfaceReflector) used the game object's mesh as the spatial audio geometry. Now, any mesh can be assigned to the AkSurfaceReflector component. Furthermore, you can assign a different Acoustic Texture to any of the mesh's materials.
Room Ambient Sound Integration
Rooms now include the ability to post an AK Event which can be used to play fixed-orientation ambient sounds (room tones) that are spatialized in 360 degrees around the listener when inside the room. And they transition smoothly to point source emitters positioned at the portals, when outside.
Presets
The workflow for saving and recalling presets for different container types that can have a direct impact on your authoring workflow, has been enhanced, especially in the context of Spatial Audio. The enhanced workflow allows for the saving of complex or frequently used Aux Bus configurations as presets that can be used as a starting point when creating your systems.
Please note that the migration to Wwise 2019.2 involves some manual operations, both in the game's code and the Wwise project, for projects using Spatial Audio with a previous version of Wwise. You can refer to the Spatial Audio Migration Guide for more details.
Memory Categories Replace and Expand Memory Pools
There are extensive changes to memory management, as Memory Pools have been replaced by Memory Categories which represent memory allocations.
- Fixed-size, pre-allocated memory pools are gone. Memory is now allocated on demand up to an optional global limit.
- The default implementation of the memory manager now uses rpmalloc. It performs better than the previous allocator, especially with multi-core rendering.
- Memory allocations are tracked using categories rather than pools, and for profiling purposes only.
- Platform-specific device memory can be specified per-allocation, rather than per-pool.
For more information on Memory Management, see Managing Memory.
Master-Mixer Hierarchy - Work Units
The Master-Mixer Hierarchy now supports the creation of Work Units (.wwu) throughout, enhancing the productivity of your audio teams, especially for games releasing many DLC packs.
WAAPI 2019.2
Enhancements have been brought to WAAPI, making it more powerful and easier to use.
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Better quality of life for WAAPI users, including better documentation, many bug fixes and miscellaneous changes.
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Better user experience when using Command Add-ons:
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It is now possible to create new Command Add-ons right from the Keyboard Shortcut dialog.
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Command Add-ons descriptions can now refer to known directory locations, making deployment of Command Add-ons easier.
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WwiseConsole
A new system called Wwise Console has replaced the legacy Wwise CLI, which still works, but is now deprecated. A number of Wwise operations are available from its command-line interface, including SoundBank generation. This can prove useful when integrating Wwise as part of an automated process, such as daily game builds with audio assets.
Device Enumeration
Device enumeration was previously only available from the Audio Preferences menu in Wwise authoring. Now, it's also possible to enumerate available devices for audio device plug-ins from the SDK (using AK::SoundEngine::GetDeviceList). This means it's now possible to implement an in-game Audio Preferences menu using the SDK. It's now also possible to know at runtime whether an audio device plug-in only supports the default device or if multiple devices are available. This API is available for built-in audio devices on all platforms that support multiple devices (PC, Mac, Linux, XboxOne, and PS4). External audio device plug-ins, such as the ASIO audio device plug-in for example, can now also implement device enumeration.
Media IDs in a Single File
Media IDs can now be stored in a separate project file for alternate management strategies. Media IDs are no longer saved in Work Unit files, reducing the number of version control conflicts. Having the Media IDs in a single file allows more control / visibility of Media IDs throughout the life of the project. For more information on Media Asset IDs, see Managing Media Asset IDs.
Wwise 2019.2 is now available for download from the Wwise Launcher's Wwise tab!
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