Volumetric Sounds Public Release

Updates Announcements
#1

Hey developers,

After receiving some great feedback on the Volumetric Sounds developer beta, we are ready to move this out of beta and into production!

Have you ever wanted to add sound to a large object like a waterfall, or ambient sounds to a big environment like a city? With Volumetric Sounds, when you child a sound to a part, the RollOffMinDistance and RollOffMaxDistance will now be measured from the surface of the part. When you’re inside the part, the sound will play all around the player just like music in headphones!

Today, we will be adding a property to SoundService, called VolumetricAudio. It will be an enum type, with three values: Disabled, Automatic, and Enabled. The property’s default value will be Automatic, but you will have the option to change it if you so desire.

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When Enabled, sounds which are children of Ball, Box, and Cylinder parts will emit from every point on the part’s surface. Today, Sounds that are children of Parts or Attachments only emit from a single point at the attachment’s WorldPosition, or the part’s center. This is a change in behavior; however, attachments are unchanged, and small parts will continue to sound very similar.

As part of this, we are going to do a Four-Phase Rollout. We will closely monitor feedback and adjust timelines as needed. Here’s a brief overview of the current plan:

Phase One: Opt-in (Available now)

  • Disabled = No volumetric audio support
  • Enabled = Volumetric audio supported on Block, Cylinder, & Ball parts
  • Automatic = Same as Disabled

Since this is a change in behavior, during phase one of this release, Automatic will be synonymous with Disabled as we carefully monitor adoption rates.

Phase Two: Opt-out for simple shapes, opt-in to complex shapes (2023)

  • Disabled = No Volumetric audio support
  • Enabled = Volumetric audio supported on all Part shapes
  • Automatic = Volumetric audio supported on Block, Cylinder, & Ball parts

Phase Three: Opt-out for all shapes (TBD)

  • Disabled = No volumetric audio support
  • Enabled = Volumetric Audio supported on all shapes
  • Automatic = Volumetric audio supported on all shapes

Phase Four: Full Release (TBD)

After extensive monitoring, we will remove the switch and default everything to Volumetric Sounds assuming all goes well.

If you like the volumetric sounds beta, we encourage you to enable this and use it in your creations. Let us know if you have any questions or feedback!

Big thanks to @cognitivetest_306, @YPT300, @ReallyLongArms, and @TimmyTinnitus for their continuous work on this feature.

262 Likes
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#2

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#3

This is so great I wanted something like this in roblox.

12 Likes
#4

I would hope that in the future there could be considerations for a single sound having multiple emitters which could power up this feature very well. For complex volumetric areas like cityscapes I may want to have multiple areas that will emit the same sound at the same volume rather than an all-encompassing shape - and doing this without bringing the baggage of union and meshes and sticking instead to primitives. It’d remove the hassle of having to code that myself.

Excited to try this out in a number of my experiences that are very audio-dependent for certain cues, world immersion and hearing pleasure.

31 Likes
#5

I have been waiting for a feature like this for so long!
Nice work!

6 Likes
#6

@ReallyLongArms
At RDC 2021, there was a feature announcement showing off physical sound simulation (muffling through walls, bouncing around based on wall material). Is this still planned?

32 Likes
#7

Really good update you got here, this will help alot to make our games more immersive an realistic. I already added this to the music in the store of my game and it really makes a difference.
Keep up the good work!

2 Likes
#8

This is probably the best thing added this year :heart:

1 Like
#9

This new feature seems pretty cool

1 Like
#10

I believe it’s actually already implemented as a FFlag and can be enabled using the Roblox Studio Mod Manager. It’s probably not complete, so we probably still have to wait for a while.

1 Like
#11

Haven’t heard FFlag in a long time.

I hope more games start using this, as it seems pretty cool. But, I’m wondering if there’s a way to emit audio from all places inside the part.

#12

Good update, Roblox, although it seems with each step forward, you usually take two steps back

1 Like
#13

Ayeee! This looks so cool, love the new updates lately!

5 Likes
#14

Wow, so making sounds from large surfaces like an ocean will be easy, instead of having to make it ambient it can be from a part just below the water and the higher up you go the sound drops off!
@SubtotalAnt8185 I think that’s what he meant by this:

With Volumetric Sounds, when you child a sound to a part, the RollOffMinDistance and RollOffMaxDistance will now be measured from the surface of the part. When you’re inside the part, the sound will play all around the player just like music in headphones!

6 Likes
#15

Nice!

I want to actually try this with headphone avatar accessories now.

1 Like
#17

What is the name of the fflag?

#18

I don’t remember the name of the FFlag itself, but there are some tweets like this one that show it off. It’s on Sitetest2.

1 Like
#19

Sounds/music is a critical aspect of most games. This will definitely be helpful for creating more immersive environments.

2 Likes
#20

Since March i waiting to it and now it was now released! I can use it now in Environments,Forest,etc. projects!

#21

I hope so, I’ve got a game with an equipment backroom that would benefit from muffling higher audio frequencies when you’re not in the room itself.

1 Like