Mads Bendsen: "Surround sound and frags", Does surround really make me a better FPS gamer?

Audio for computer games are becoming more and more sophisticated and the game engines is increasing in audio quality and also in spatial capability. It seems for the moment that the accepted standard in the game industry is following that of the cinema, that is, most modern game engines supports 5.1 and 7.1 audio.

There are very few studies on audio hardware in modern main stream computer games. The studies that has been undertaken has mostly focused on how sound can be used as auditory display, or how sound influences the perceived quality of the graphics. Little work has been done investigating if spatial quality changes anything in computer games. The purpose of this project is to investigate how surround compares to stereo in computer games. The project has been undertaken in collaboration with a major headphone manufacturer, and the question we have tried to answer is: "Does surround make a difference in computer games"

This presentation will tell you if you will become better at playing FPS games with surround sound.

Speakers Biography:

I am a master student of Mediaology at Aalborg University. I am specializing in audio reproduction for computer games. I have spent the last semester in Silicon Valley in a joined internship between "Sennheiser communication" and "Sennheiser Research" where I was responsible for investigating the performance of the newest Sennheiser hardware in relation to computer games, with focus on performance enhancement of FPS gamers, and immersion.