John Lemon - Listeners

Understanding Listener Placement

The listener in Game-Audio terms is the camera for sound, the ears into our game world. For camera placement, we already are used to to referring to terms like "First Person" or "Third Person", yet audio is only perceived as matching or off - without thinking about why.

This Mini-Project uses Unity's "Stealth Game"/ John Lemon Microgame in combination with Unity's Starter Assets for First and Third Person Controller to fluently switch between different Camera Perspectives and combine them with different listener placements. 

To give a clearer impression of the listener placement and rotation, you will find a pair of headphones to visualize the current position and rotation of the listener.

The actual gameplay (e.g. being spotted by ghosts) still only works with the intended top down perspective. 

DISCLAIMER

FMOD sadly glitches in some browsers and results in buggy audio output, e.g. in Microsoft Edge. (Firefox for instance is working fine.) Never the less, consider downloading the application via the Github Repo below to have a more fluent experience.

Controls:

• Camera Perspective - use Shift + 1/2/3 to switch between 1st Person, Top-Down and 3rd Person view
• Listener Position - use CTRL (or SPACE) + 1/2 to switch between the listener being placed on the Camera or on the player.
• Listener Rotation - use ALT + 1/2 to switch between the listener rotating with the camera or with the player.
• Show/ Hide Headphones (Listener Visualisation) - 4
• Reload Scene - R

Soundsources:

This build only includes the following (spatialized) soundsources besides the general ambience. This was done to perceive the single sounds more clearly and not clutter the sound impression - especially when using uncommon/ weird listener placements:

• Ghosts (Synth-Vibrato)
• Gargoyles (Stone movement)
• Shower (running water)
• Candles (fire crackling)
• Electric Light (buzzing)

Learning:

You will notice, that we normally expect the sound to mimic the perception of the camera angle, meaning normally sticking to the Camera rotation works best. The Placement of the listener on the other hand differs and has less of a universal solution. Especially for Top-Down/ Isometric or 2D Games as well, you will notice, that having the listener on the camera may result in a too quite output, because the listener is too far away from the soundsource.

Find the full repository here:

https://github.com/Joshnt/JohnLemon_Listener-Learn

Introduction Video:

*Coming soon*

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Additional Ressources:

Headphone Model: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/headphone-c6278518c51e496a82687982f545ac3a