Difference between speakers and heaphones in VR

[Juanlo]

Hi guys, I will probably receive my Oculus Rift in a week or two (order is processing right now, first day baker), but I was wondering if someone has tried speakers in VR mode. As far as I can tell, if we are using speakers (stereo or surround, it does not matter), the sound position should be relative to our character's torso. But if we are using headphones, the sound should be relative to our character's head.

Why? Because with headphones, our speakers are moving with our head, but with speakers only our head is moving, the speakers are always at the same place.

Any comments are appreciated.

[Fred Dawes]

I agree, however the use of non-surround speakers seems like it would break the immersion. You would look to your left and only hear out of your right ear.

[Programmer Joe]

In TF2 VR mode only supports headphones. The "ear angles" are the same as the "eye angles".

It would be relatively simple to add a convar to switch to speakers (where the ears match the virtual torso) but the yaw drift on the Rift makes that problematic. If the ear angles were set to the torso angle your sound would eventually be coming from the opposite direction of where it should be come from.

[Juanlo]

Thanks for taking your time to comment Joe. I'm not a headphones guy, I prefer using 5.1 speakers. After trying CMSS3D, Dolby Headphone and similar "virtual surround" headphone systems (as well as real multichannel headphones), nothing can touch the accuracy of a real 5.1 speaker system regarding audio positioning. And nothing touches a good subwoofer hehe.

I have been testing MyEars[www.myears.net.au] audio software. It's really complex to set up properly but it works quite well. Then again, it's miles away from a real surround system. How long until we can get true binaural audio encoding in real time?