Base — ships in GS_Audio.
Spatial audio is handled for you. Fire a sound at a position or on an entity and it is placed in the world: direction, distance falloff, and HRTF binaural processing so it sounds like it is coming from somewhere rather than from inside your head.
There is nothing to add to a sound to make this happen, and nothing to add to a chain. The only thing you configure is the listener — where the player is hearing from.
For settings and behaviour detail, see the Framework API reference.
Contents
- Setting the Listener
- Third-Person: Splitting the Listener
- Distance Falloff
- What This Does Not Do
- Quick Reference
- Glossary
- See Also
Setting the Listener
There is no listener component to add. The Audio Manager carries the listener, and you point it at an entity.
For a first-person game, that is the whole setup — point it at the camera or the player and you are done.
If you set nothing, the manager falls back to its own entity and warns you. That fallback exists so the system is never silently broken, but it is not where you want your listener.
Third-Person: Splitting the Listener
In third person the camera and the character are in different places, and “where is the player hearing from” has two different right answers.
- How close a sound is should be measured from the character. Proximity is about your body.
- Which direction a sound is in should be measured from the camera. Left and right are about where you are looking.
So set them separately:
| Set this | To this |
|---|---|
| Spatial target | Your character |
| Orientation target | Your camera |
This is the recommended third-person setup, and the difference is immediately audible — sounds sit where you expect instead of drifting with the camera boom.
For first person, use the single-target call and let both follow one entity.
Distance Falloff
Each audio event sets its own Distance Min / Max:
- Inside min, the sound plays at full volume.
- Between min and max, it fades.
- At max it is genuinely silent — not faintly audible forever.
That last point is deliberate. Physically accurate falloff never quite reaches zero, which leaves distant sounds quietly cluttering the mix. Max distance here means what it says.
Reverb behaves slightly differently: it stays constant until three quarters of the way out, then eases off. A room sounds like the same room wherever you stand in it, while the dry sound still gets quieter as you walk away.
What This Does Not Do
Worth knowing before you evaluate the result:
- Nothing is blocked by geometry. A sound behind a wall is quieter because it is further away, not because the wall is there. Occlusion needs Audio Pro.
- Up, down, in front and behind are subtle. Left and right are clear and reliable. Elevation and front/back are inherently weak cues with a generic HRTF — that is the technique, not a bug.
Quick Reference
| Need | Bus | Method |
|---|---|---|
| Set the listener (first person) | AudioManagerRequestBus | SetListener |
| Set where distance is measured from | AudioManagerRequestBus | SetListenerSpatialTarget |
| Set where direction is measured from | AudioManagerRequestBus | SetListenerOrientationTarget |
| Play a sound that follows an object | AudioManagerRequestBus | PlayEventOnEntity |
Glossary
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Listener | The point in the world the player hears from |
| Spatial target | The entity distance is measured from |
| Orientation target | The entity direction is measured from |
| HRTF | Head-related transfer function — the filtering that makes a sound seem to come from a direction |
See Also
For settings and behaviour detail:
For related systems:
- The Basics: Audio Manager — where the listener lives
- The Basics: Audio Events — per-sound distance settings
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