Audiophiles Rejoice
As Sony gears up for the upcoming release of the Playstation 5, we’ve been receiving updates here and there on the hardware’s potential to satiate our curiosity. Among the hottest points of contention, including what the console will finally be priced at, one thing remains without question – the PS5’s Tempest Engine, and the 3D audio that it will be providing is going to be unlike anything we’ve ever experience in gaming.
Technical Director on the upcoming RPG Hellpoint, Marc-André Jutras of Cradle Games, has recently commented on what he’s experienced first hand with the Tempest engine, as well as the potential for the engine moving forward. He mentioned that even though 3D audio itself is not a new concept, the PS5 handling it on a hardware level means it will be easier than ever to implement, all the while giving the CPU a massive boost in performance.
“3D audio has been around for a long while,” Jutras said. “You could have it running on existing consoles easily… but not a lot of game do, because it pretty much takes too much CPU time. Until now, it had to run software.”
“But now it’s hardware-accelerated,” Jutras continued. “It means there’s no reason not to use it. For us, it will most likely mean PS5 might sound better with the flick of a switch. Assuming you have the audio system to handle that. It also means we could have a CPU thread freed from heavy audio computation! Even if both consoles had exactly the same CPU, having a specific task being hardware accelerated can be a huge boost for the CPU.”
What are your thoughts on everything we’ve heard about the PS5’s use of 3D audio? Are you excited about its potential? Sound off in the comment section below and let us know what you think.