AES New York 2018
Game Audio & XR Track Event GA08
Friday, October 19, 11:30 am — 12:30 pm (1E08)
Game Audio & XR: GA08 - Writing a New Audio Engine for UE4: Innovation Under Pressure
Presenter:Aaron McLeran, Epic Games
In this talk I will describe the technical design challenges and opportunities inherent in writing a new next-gen-capable audio engine for Unreal Engine 4 (UE4), a widely licensed game engine. I will present the prior state of the audio engine and analyze technical constraints and issues which guided API design choices and feature prioritization. I will then describe challenges we faced while testing for quality, stability and correctness and the process of launching a new audio engine within a regular release schedule of UE4 engine updates while not breaking licensees and backward compatibility. Finally, I will discuss the launch of the audio engine on Fortnite on 6 platforms without slowing down audio content production or interrupting an ambitious 2-week release cadence.
 | This session is presented in association with the AES Technical Committee on Audio for Games and AES Technical Committee on Spatial Audio and AES Technical Committee on Audio for Cinema |