Fmod Studio Road Map

Avid user of Fmod Studio here till day one, I am a bit disappointed by the lack of transparency about what’s being cooked for the next major version. Not being able to project in the future, no road map, no time frame for the next release. Maybe I can live with it because I am sure it will be great !

Just curious if anyone is feeling the same.

Glad to hear you’re still with us from day one and I can understand your frustrations regarding knowing what’s coming. In the last few years, we’ve shifted to a focus on bringing changes directly into releases rather than the old approach of cooking a big release with a bomb of new features. These days we try to limit what we put in major versions to only things that will break compatibility in some way allowing us to deliver sooner. We are also wary of promising major new features and having people risk their own deadlines if our ship date slips.

More recently we’ve been trying to improve our release regularity, aiming for a patch every 5 weeks and trying hard to ensure that doesn’t slip. We are also working away at 2.03 with a couple of new features but as I mention we are wary about announcing them prematurely. I know that doesn’t really give you any answers but hopefully explains a little as to how we operate.

Also know that we are constantly taking feedback and reevaluating what goes into our releases, sometimes great ideas come along and plans change. If you do have any thoughts about what you like to see (or seem improved) in Studio or our APIs, we are always listening.

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Thanks, Matthew, for the feedback. I appreciate this insight. Regarding the delivery pacing of each release, I have seen real improvements over a couple of years. As I’ve written here, I am using Fmod Studio from first release (and Fmod API a long time before). It is a real “game changer” for game audio and the things I like the most is its versatility, its ease of implementation and its stability (and Live Update of course :wink: ).
I am a technical sound teacher (among other things) in several video games schools, mainly in Paris and my colleagues are all working with Wwise. A large majority of game studios I am connected with are also working with Wwise. My position is not comfortable here and I always need to demonstrate the efficiency of Fmod (it’s not difficult though). For me, war between Wwise/Fmod is not the point, it’s all about game audio strategies, but you can be sure I have converted lot of sound designers in France to Fmod technology over the last 20 years (I have developed Fmod programs for game designers, sound designers and maybe we can continue this discussion aspect in PM).

For improvements, I am waiting (dreaming) for :

  • 3rd order (or more) Ambisonic support
  • better binaural support, especially concerning use of Fmod mixer
  • able to address more audio outputs (a dream would be 128 outputs, DANTE support ?)
  • effects improvements
  • pure data patches integration !!
  • more development toward Reaper / Fmod communication
  • a web based version of fmod studio (would be able to be in live update and make changes from phones)
  • more development in Fmod scenes (able to record movement of objects, import image background, and maybe a possibility to integrate scenes in games…)
  • midi mapping of everything and better support for control surfaces (including EUCON protocol)
  • Fmod script creation with AI powered aid

Thanks again for your direct feedback, hope to hear more from you.
Thierry

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Thanks for the kind words and cheers for spreading the good word about FMOD.

  • 3rd order ambisonics (at least) is on our radar, I’ve added your voice to the ticket.
  • Better binaural, what would you like to see here?
  • Addressing more outputs, we have a custom version of FMOD that can be licensed that does this. For more details contact sales@fmod.com.
  • Effect improvements, we have some coming in 2.03 :slight_smile:
  • Pure data support, this isn’t on our radar but I’ve added a ticket to record your (and others) interest.
  • More reaper/fmod communication. What would you like to see supported?
  • Web based Studio, do you mean running Studio locally from a browser or running a remote Studio from a browser?
  • More from scenes, this is on our radar, one idea we had was exporting a profiler capture to a scene.
  • Better control surface support, midi, osc, eucon are all in our tracker, albeit with low demand, I’ll add your voice.
  • Script creation powered with AI, interesting idea, I wonder whether you could use our network socket connection from your own AI powered tool to do this. I’m not familiar with what would be required for training it though. Interesting idea!
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I can +1 for PD support. That kind of modularity has given so much breath to Ableton with Max. It might help to make a distinction in what FMOD has to offer that is different to WWise.

  • 3rd order ambisonics (at least) is on our radar, I’ve added your voice to the ticket.
    // thanks
  • Better binaural, what would you like to see here?
    // when using resonance audio the resonance audio source goes directly to the resonance listener plugin on the mixer master channel bypassing completely fmod mixer, would like a solution to this problem…
  • Addressing more outputs, we have a custom version of FMOD that can be licensed that does this. For more details contact sales@fmod.com.
    // ok interesting but opening doors here to everyone can make some crazy uses of Fmod.
  • Effect improvements, we have some coming in 2.03 :slight_smile:
    // Gooood
  • Pure data support, this isn’t on our radar but I’ve added a ticket to record your (and others) interest.
    // That will be awesome and will easily compete against metasound it will also add midi support to fmod !
  • More reaper/fmod communication. What would you like to see supported?
    // I think the actual integration is still in an early stage (no mac support for timeline export for example). Would like some Reaper scripts than can mimic Fmod in order to cook events in Reaper first, for example an export of a Reaper automation to a parameter. Fmod effects as VST and share the settings between the two…
  • Web based Studio, do you mean running Studio locally from a browser or running a remote Studio from a browser?
    // Yes
  • More from scenes, this is on our radar, one idea we had was exporting a profiler capture to a scene.
    // That could be very usefull
  • Better control surface support, midi, osc, eucon are all in our tracker, albeit with low demand, I’ll add your voice.
    // Thanks and +1 for OSC
  • Script creation powered with AI, interesting idea, I wonder whether you could use our network socket connection from your own AI powered tool to do this. I’m not familiar with what would be required for training it though. Interesting idea!

Thanks Mathew for these infos !

Thanks for all the feedback, just one follow up:

when using resonance audio the resonance audio source goes directly to the resonance listener plugin on the mixer master channel bypassing completely fmod mixer, would like a solution to this problem

Internally Resonance encodes the signal to 3rd order ambisonics and sends it to the listener for decoding to binaural, so the plan here is to have the ambisonics flow through the mixer instead and decode at the listener (once ambisonics is supported).

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