10 Facts About OpenAL

OpenAL is a cross-platform audio application programming interface (API).

OpenAL is an environmental 3D audio library, which can add realism to a game by simulating attenuation, the Doppler effect (change in frequency as a result of motion), and material densities.

OpenAL aimed to originally be an open standard and open-source replacement for proprietary 3D audio APIs such as DirectSound and Core Audio, though in practice has largely been implemented on various platforms as a wrapper around said proprietary APIs or as a proprietary and vendor-specific fork.

OpenAL was originally developed in 2000 by Loki Software to help them in their business of porting Windows games to Linux.

However, OpenAL Soft is a widely used open source alternative.

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General functionality of OpenAL is encoded in source objects, audio buffers and a single listener.

Net result of all of this for the end user is that in a properly written OpenAL application, sounds behave quite naturally as the user moves through the three-dimensional space of the virtual world.

Unlike the OpenGL specification, the OpenAL specification includes two subsections of the API: the core consisting of the actual OpenAL function calls, and the ALC API which is used to manage rendering contexts, resource usage and locking in a cross platform manner.

Single listener model in OpenAL is tailored to a single human user and is not fit for artificial intelligence or robotic simulations or multiple human participants as in collaborative musical performances.

OpenAL fails to take into account sound propagation delays.