Joystiq
Joystiq News
Popping in and out of cover has been a hallmark of the Gears of War franchise since came out in 2006. It hasn't changed much because it didn't need to. What's always been an issue though is how thin the game sounds -- a shortcoming of the underlying tech, Unreal Engine, powering it. But Microsoft owns the series now and has far more money to throw at it than former owners/ Epic Games did. With help from Microsoft Research, Redmond's Gears of War factory found a high tech way to fix that problem. It's called Triton.
Two years ago Microsoft Research's Nikunj Raghuvanshi and John Snyder (PDF) titled "Parametric Wave Field Coding for Precomputed Sound Propagation." The long and short of the research is that it detailed how to create realistic reverb effects based on objects in a video game's map, to hear it in action pop on a pair of headphones and watch the video below.
Console Bang News!