Cheers bill, very interesting.

I can recall a game for the Sega Saturn that had no visuals - must look that up.

Aye - here it is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Sound:_Kaze_no_Regret

No problem I love talking and writing about audio, wish I had more time for it.

With regard to portfolios, track laying audio to existing videos is a great way to learn lots of skills from sound design to mixing and storytelling.  I did this loads when I was transitioning from music to sound design, I still like to do it to work through new challenges and create new material.

More important than that is how you create audio to go in an engine, there's lots of ways to show this off but none better than working with indie teams and mod teams. Search moddb.com for projects that look active and approach them offering your services as audio designer extraordinaire. Not sure about how to find indie projects that are in progress, I'm sure a little searching will turn up some good results.

I say look for active teams because many indie games and mods sadly just fall over at some point, so try and find ones with someone good driving and a decent team.

Do as much recording as you can, try not to use library sounds.  If you can't afford an expensive recorder an posh mics that's ok, get creative.  The BF guys love to use camcorder recordings for their documentary style aesthetic. You can get that sound from cheap handheld recorders with auto gain settings like the olympus LS series. Very clear but also very dynamic, and cheap!

It's a combination of all those things that makes a good portfolio for me, but it might be different for others.

To keep the recruitment stuff out of the thread feel free to message me with specific questions or if you want feedback on som sounds

The raytracing thing is really interesting, sounds similar to RaySpace, which uses "diffuse bubble tracing" apparently. I've only used the demo so far though.

Would love to hear it mate, send me a link!  It's awesome that you're building your own library, the sounds you have and the way you use them define you as an audio designer so getting your own source and thinking differently is great.  Try some other recorders out the zooms are ok but a bit flat sounding, I find the olympus LS range to be better and cheaper.  I have an LS5 and it's very clear, the other great thing about it is the auto gain control which makes things sound like documentary audio, I.e. The way sounds are portrayed in 99% of the media, lots of ducking when loud sounds are captured.  A huge bonus and full of character. Also the Sony M10 and D50 are great handhelds too, better than the zoom but don't have the auto gain of the olympus stuff.  Anyone who sniffs at auto gain compensation should play Battlefield, enough said.

When I need to record stuff as raw and high quality as possible I use sound devices, very expensive but buy once and use forever.  For larger recording sessions like weapon shoots I hire them in along with lots of mics, hiring gear is extremely cheap.  Obviously it would be lovely to own that schoeps M/S mic setup to use it whenever but if you only really need it 3 or 4 times a year then the £20 hire charge makes a lot more sense than buying outright for £6k.

Yea although i have only used the D50 and not the M10 i have lots of friends recordings made with it and it is very clean with a low noise floor.

I love BF 3 and 4 for their consistency in weapon audio design, the reverb implementation and the quality of cinematic moments like the building falling down is extremely well produced.  The mix is wonderfully managed by the HDR system and feels hyper-real.

Halo 4 has absolutely fantastic weapon audio design, rather than just following on from Bungie's work they made it their own and it sounds different from every other game.  It doesn't sound like generic synthetic sci-fi stuff either, it's all organic and believable.

I work on speakers most of the time, only checking things on headphones occasionally.  I have these http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sennheiser-9969-HD650-Reference-Headphone/dp/B00018MSNI which are open backed so great for listening in quiet environments but rubbish for the train because they don't block any outside sound. In general I think open backed phones sound a lot better than closed ones but always let more noise through.  It's really bad for your ears to work on headphones all the time, it's also more difficult to make a mix that translates to other systems well.

Man I bet those hd 800s are amazing!

Put this in the vr thread at first as it is very analogous to what the OR addresses but it definitely beongs here. Its technology ive been waiting a very long time to appear in games and more importantly, be able to put in my own games, and while its currently only in alpha stage in this Unity implementation and there are limits in the evaluation version available, i'm really excited about maybe getting this into my games

Just remember you've got to wear headphones (or very particularly placed speakers) and make sure the channels are the right way round

Reading the slides from Abrash's talk about what valve have been working on with Oculus was incredibly inspiring, they seem to be getting the visual and movement aspects of the technology to a very advanced, pretty much revolutionary stage, And this now cropping up in Unity? I may postpone adding vr aspects to demos etc until I can get the second OR devkit, which id assume would be crystal cove with some further work by valve cropping up in the sdk, but assuming (praying to heaven) that this is in strong form around a similar time, im in game dev heaven

Has anyone used the Dolby Headphone software?  Reading this which details getting it up and running via MPC-HC and through stereo headphones.  Tried the test track and it defo works.

Woah! So wait, can that be used for surround gaming? I was researching software solutions for virtual surround, that Razer thing didn't work on my system which was annoying, and I couldn't find and Dolby virtual things, though I obviously didn't look hard enough. As I've said before, I've been looking to get one of these at some point for use with my PS3, It'd be nice to try the tech out on PC first though.

I have tickets (decent seats) to the London one. Plus good seats (not VIP sadly) to Distant Worlds for the Final Fantasy concert. Hopefully it'll be good.

VGL was the same in the first 2 (or did I go to 3?) years that they had it in UK. Looking forward to a different line up, I hear they'll have some Shadow of the Colossus, yessss!!!!

I didn't rate those demos of that Dolby tech that much, perhaps it's the content or the bit rate. Would need to hear it properly before I could judge for myself.

Whats fun is that the push to next gen and particularly with Sony diving in, people are going to want to develop better binaural audio for vr. Once that happens hrtf processing will get built into wwise and other audio engines and will be easy to put into any 3d game be it vr or not.

Can't wait!