“Scott Draeker, president of Loki Entertainment Software,
said, ‘What SGI’s OpenGL has done for 3D-Video, OpenAL will do for
3D-Audio.’ “
“For Linux gamers, the better it gets, the better it must
become. As 3D gaming has opened up increasingly for Linux, what has
lagged behind the eye-popping visual element is similarly
ear-bending audio. Because the audio libraries for Macintosh and
Windows games are both proprietary (closed-source) and incompatible
with the Linux operating system, opportunities for state-of-the-art
3D sound for Linux-native and Linux-ported games were scarce. In
fact, Loki noted in a press statement that before OpenAL, the
initiative the company is spear-heading, there was no standard
3D-audio implementation available for Linux. Thus, the decision to
develop an audio API that is both cross-platform and open source is
a significant breakthrough for all gamers.”
” ‘OpenAL represents a milestone for Linux and for the game
industry in general,’ said Mr. Draeker. ‘Until now, games running
on Linux have not had access to the advanced 3D-Audio features
available on other platforms. OpenAL provides those advanced
features with an open source, non-proprietary implementation which
is available not just for Linux, but for Windows and MacOS games as
well.’ “