As the PC games industry has established itself in Taiwan, both the government and the new generation of firms that have entered this emerging sector are pushing for local development both of software and related hardware components.
One recent development has been breakthroughs in chip design for the Xear 3D Sound Technology (X3DST) released by C-Media Electronics Inc (
"In the past, Taiwan has focused primarily in developing new game software, but in the area of hardware components -- primarily graphics and sound -- it has had to rely on imports whose price has remained high.
"At the same time, Taiwan was doing much of the OEM for these foreign products, and with good results, so that a solid foundation for self-produced cards has been established," said Chang Wen-tsung (張文村), deputy managing director of the Multimedia Technology Lab of the Institute of Information Industry. According to Eric Cheng (鄭期成), president of C-Media, through the use of the Xear technology, C-Media has been able to create a 5.1 channel, 360-degree surround sound effect using a single set of headphones and a set of 3D speakers. Conventionally, this has required six speakers to achieve.
C-Media has now combined forces with Taiwan's biggest online games company Gamania Digital Entertainment (
According to Cheng (
"It will even allow voice alteration, so that men can speak as women and women as men. The voice can be set to match the age, sex and profession of the character portrayed in the online game," Cheng added.
As for the background music to games, this is played in 3D surround sound as if from six speakers, giving it enormous power. "More importantly, said Bryan Yueh (
"In an online game, there are hundreds or even thousands of players in the game. The sound should reflect the different location of players, with voices coming from above or below, from close by or from a distance. This is really quite difficult to achieve. Something like Microsoft's 3D Direct, which is what most chips support, simply is not capable of the three dimensional positioning of sound, re-recreating the noise of an approaching enemy or the swoosh of a weapon as it just misses you, Yueh said.
Yueh emphasized that in future, an increasing number of games will have built-in support for X3DST so that players can have 3D surround sound at the lost possible cost. The technology will be showcased in a new 3D online role-playing game to be released on Sept. 20 at the Tokyo computer show called Noah's Ark.
The feature that X3DST stand out is its attention to details. Stuff like the direction from which a sound comes, the force of the sound, and the different sounds made by the impact of a weapon against wood, metal or flesh. 涗3DST makes use of "sound coding" technology which can record small differences in the nature of a sound, such as the loudness of the sound and the distance from which it comes, said Cheng.
"This allows it to approximate real world sounds much more closely."
Even more importantly from the consumer's point of view is that with X3DST it is not necessary to purchase six sets of speakers to achieve this result. "All you need is two speakers, three if you add a base speaker, and a set of headphones. It is a great saving in cost and in space," Cheng added.
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