Sony has announced the technological spinoff of its 360 Reality Audio feature, dubbed “Gaming Virtualizer by 360 Reality Audio,” which is a new plug-in designed for game developers to produce spatial game sound playable via headphones.
Gaming Virtualizer by 360 Reality Audio
Gaming Virtualizer exclusively integrates with Wwise, a widely used cross-platform audio middleware for games. Sony says its solution runs with less performance overhead and better latency performance compared to existing spatial surround technologies (Windows, for example, comes with Windows Sonic by default since Windows 10). The technology could even make its way into low-power devices with limited processing power, such as smartphones.
According to the company, Gaming Virtualizer is currently being validated by various game developers across Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, and China. As of this month, the developers testing the software include COLOPL, Cygames, GungHo Online Entertainment, Niantic, and Square Enix.
Based on developers’ statements, it looks like Gaming Virtualizer won’t require your headphone to explicitly support any special technology (despite 360 Reality Audio being a proprietary technology that requires device’s specific support), so any decently good headphones should be able to achieve significantly better spatial quality with games that supports this feature.
Pokdepinion: Let’s see how it competes against Dolby Atmos and the likes.
