Binaural or 3D Audio?

As my project has advanced it has become more apparent to me that my plan to use binaural audio in my game is perhaps flawed.

My original reason for choosing to utilise binaural audio recordings within my game was to lend an absolute and convincing “reality” to the sounds in my game world.  This is a key element to my game, as I want the game world to feel believable.  I felt that using binaural recordings would best do this because of how realistic they sound. However, binaural audio is captured in a certain location and moment in space and time – when listened to it relays this spatial information to the listener: direction, height, distance – they can all be relatively identified.  For a fixed media setting, this would be ideal.  I would know exactly where characters would be in relation to sound emitters, and I could record the binaural audio for those scenarios.  The same cannot be said for interactive media, where the player controls the location and movements of the character.

As such, the spatial information of binaural audio loses its meaning when placed into my game world.  The recordings would not be able to reflect the movements or placement of my game character in the world, as they hear the sounds.  As a result of this, I have realised that a better option for my game – and for what I ultimately want to achieve from the audio – is to use 3D audio.

I have been experimenting with the Oculus Audio SDK plugin, and the early results indicate that I should be able to replicate a far more convincing soundscape using it than I would using binaural recordings.  The plugin works directly in Unity, but can also be used in FMOD (something I hope to experiment with shortly).  Naturally, the plugin has been made for Oculus’ virtual reality headsets – however, it works the same whether the player is playing in VR or not.  I did consider switching to a virtual reality game, however I ultimately felt it would detract from the overarching goal of my project; to place audio at the centre of the game, and have the visuals take a step back.