“OpenAL, the Open Audio Library, is an initiative from
Creative Labs and Loki Entertainment designed to provide a
cross-platform open source solution for programming 2D and 3D
audio. It is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License
(LGPL), with current implementations supporting Windows, the
Macintosh OS, Linux, FreeBSD, OS/2, and BeOS. The OpenAL API
has been designed for portability of applications between supported
platforms, particularly games and other multimedia applications
using OpenGL for 3D graphics.”
“As its name implies, OpenAL is analogous in many ways to SGI’s
OpenGL, a widely implemented standard for specifying high-quality
3D graphics (see Chris Halsall’s article for more information
regarding OpenGL). The analogy extends far beyond the name: Many of
the design considerations for OpenAL are derived from similar
considerations for the visual effects possible from OpenGL,
particularly with regard to movement in three dimensions and
proximity-dependent texture variance. Because the OpenAL API is so
similar to OpenGL, programmers employing OpenGL for graphics can
more easily bind sonic activity to visuals, leading to exciting
possibilities for games and other graphics-intensive
applications.”
“As with OpenGL, a little OpenAL code does a lot. Developers can
simply place their sounds into a scene and let OpenAL render the
changes of the sounds relative to the positional changes of the
listener.”