ABSTRACT
Attenuating sounds by screen-space distance is a powerful and effective technique. The classical model of audio distance attenuation and panning has been in use for decades. The listener is placed at the camera, and the distance from each sound source to the listener position is passed into an attenuation function. These attenuation functions may encode a realistic sound falloff curve, some generic nonrealistic but game-targeted function, or a custom curve that is designed per event. The attenuation position must be placed at the player’s location, and the panning position must be placed at the camera. This is the only way in which the attenuation and the panning of all sounds will sound right. Decoupling attenuation and panning solves this problem by providing a real, in-world meaning to distance.
