Dissonance Proximity Chat with FMOD (Spatialization & Occlusion)

Hello,

I’m using Dissonance with FMOD. I’ve set up two audio buses: one for proximity chat and another for walkie-talkie (2D). When talking via the walkie-talkie, the effects on that bus give me exactly the sound I want.

However, I’m having some questions about the proximity chat: The voice fades when another player moves away and gets louder when they come closer. That part works nicely. But when the player moves to my right or left, I don’t hear the sound coming from those directions—it still seems mono. Where should I start to implement proper directional audio in my game?

Additionally, if there’s a wall between me and the other player, I want the sound to be attenuated accordingly, but otherwise sound natural. How can I integrate that?

It may be easier to explain these with a video. Let’s assume the green ball is the other player: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0W29lnDGD9E

– After a few research –
What I understand, proximity chat audio from Dissonance can be sent directly into FMOD via a bus. The issue with this approach is that we can’t send parameters, which means we can’t really use things like spatialization or occlusion.

When I searched around on the Discord, I found their “FMODVoiceEventPlayback” script. From what I can tell, its purpose is to send the player’s live voice into an FMOD event. That way, we can attach parameters to the voice event and make use of spatialization and occlusion.

I’m not very experienced with this, but does this sound like the right approach? Or have there been issues with this kind of setup before?

Thanks