Head’s up, devs: After quietly acquiring game/VR/AR audio tech firm Impulsonic early this year, Valve came forward today to debut a beta version of its new Steam Audio SDK that’s freely available for you to use.
This is potentially helpful to a broad array of game makers, since the tech is freely available, intended to be used across any VR or non-VR device (including platforms that run Windows, Android, Linux, etc.) and accessible as either a C API or a Unity plugin.
Valve’s chief selling point for Steam Audio appears to be its “physics-based sound propagation” capabilities, which are intended to make it easier for you to immerse players in your game by setting up audio effects that bounce and reflect off in-game geometry.
It looks like neat tech, and Valve employees are already popping into the community hub to add that development will continue on the API, with a planned Unreal Engine 4 integration shipping down the road.
For the moment, you can download the latest release of the SDK over on Valve’s Steam Audio download hub.