Arc Raiders reverb and occlusion

Unreal Engine
1

I’m in love with how reverb and occlusion is handled in Arc Raiders, it feels incredibly natural to my ears. I’m curious about how I might replicate this in Fmod. My current context is a cave environment of tight corridors and wide open caverns, where important distant sounds echo through these spaces to reach the player.

I’m currently experimenting with multiple reverb sends (snapshots) using volumes in UE, and wondering if this is the best method. I have 3 different types for my current level.

I’m getting occlusion setup and a bit confused by the instructions in the docs. Should the Occlusion param in Fmod (matching the name of the one I made in UE project settings) be local? As I set a custom listener, I assume sources trace to the component set as the Audio Listener Override? Is there any way to ignore collision on the parent of the listener override? (visibility would be great except my player character needs to block it)

I’m also curious if there are any tips/tricks/examples/guides on accomplishing this kind of thing.

Thanks!

2

Yes.

It’s pretty natural for different sounds to come from different places in your game world, which makes it entirely plausible for some sounds to be occluded from the listener while others aren’t, or for some sounds to be more occluded from the listener than others. It therefore makes sense to make the parameter local, as doing so will allow that parameter to have a different value in each event instance, so that each event instance can have a different level of occlusion.

That’s correct: The FMOD listener uses the transform of the Unreal listener, so using Audio Listener Override to move the Unreal listener moves the FMOD listener - and the position used for occlusion raycasting.

Yes. When setting up your occlusion settings, you can choose which trace channel your game should use for occlusion raycasting. Rays are only occluded by geometry that responds to the chosen trace channel.

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