By
Cody “Micajah” Bye, Managing Editor



The Dolby audio experience has been caressing the ear drums of eager
sound enthusiasts for decades. Movie goers and home theater aficionados
have been entertained by the progressively cinematic experiences that
they enjoy when surrounding by Dolby Digital speakers and surround
sound. From thundering bass tones to snappy high notes, almost every
media junky has heard their fair share of Dolby sound.



Most gamers, however, don’t realize that their favorite games
have been getting the Dolby treatment since 1994 when an SNES game
named King
Arthur’s World integrated Dolby surround sound
into its gaming experience. While thousands of gamers oogle and
salivate over the latest screenshots or graphics card upgrades, few
really discuss the audio portion of the game. Some gamers have even
restricted their own sound experience by purchasing cheap headsets in
order to maximize the social experience inside their games via voice
communications. Rather than experience the game in true 5.1 or 7.1
surround sound gaming, users are limiting themselves to a mono or
stereo experience simply to enjoy the conversations of their fellow
team and guildmates.

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The Dolby
Axon logo.

But what if you could combine the two experiences; engage in a
fantastic cinematic sound experience while also enjoying the very best
of in-game voice technology? That’s exactly the sort of
combination that Dolby is hoping to bring to the gaming world with
their recently revealed Dolby Axon technology.



So what is Dolby Axon? From a basic standpoint, Dolby Axon is a
“voice communication platform designed to deliver a 3-D voice
experience in online games and virtual worlds that is clearer, more
realistic, and more immersing.” According to the press
release issued this morning, Dolby Axon features 3-D voice, which
delivers an immersing, realistic 3-D voice experience complete with
surround panning and distance attenuation; an occlusion engine that
dynamically responds to game geometry, enabling gamers to experience
voice communication that matches the game environment; voice fonts that
allow gamers to take on the voice attributes of game characters; and a
whole list of other impressive features that really emphasize that
Dolby has entered the voice marketplace in online gaming with a
cannonball-sized splash.



For many readers, this may seem like a dream come true. While there has
been surround sound in games for over a decade, and voice communication
in games for a number of years, there hasn’t yet been an
integration of voice into full Dolby surround sound. But even with the
press release, there is still a lot of unknowns concerning Dolby Axon.
Why did they choose to enter the voice market? Why dub the technology
Axon? How long has the technology been in development?



To learn more about this newly revealed technology, I sat down with
Dolby Laboratories’ Matt Tullis who serves as the senior
manager for the games market. After exchanging pleasantries, we moved
right into the questions. First, I asked Tullis why Dolby decided to
enter the voice communication marketplace in online games.
“We really wanted to continue to bring the cinematic
experience to games,” Tullis said. “And there has
been a big online movement over the last few years, and we really just
wanted to improve the overall audio quality that the users are
experiencing. There’s lots of room for improvement in the
audio quality of voice.”

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Eventually
our guild and PvP experiences may be driven through Dolby Axon.

So where does a company like Dolby begin when trying to tackle a new
technological hurdle like voice communication? Apparently, Dolby
Laboratories goes for the throat, and they don’t pull any
punches. “We wanted to attack the fundamental problems of
voice,” Tullis said. “Things like clipping
prevention, dialogue leveling, along with exploring gameplay
possibilities with our technology.”



In explaining some of the gameplay possibilities to me, Tullis had me
remember a short demo that I was allowed to see at one of the recent
conferences earlier in the year. At that time, Tullis had me hop onto a
character while he dropped a “spy microphone” into
a room where another developer’s avatar was standing.
Although we couldn’t hear the other developer when we stepped
out of the room (due to the 3D and distance volume adjustments to the
voice communication), when I turned on my receiver for the microphone I
could hear the other avatar’s conversation as clear as day.



With the gameplay experience fully explained and the basics of the
technology rolling through my brain, I next asked Tullis where the Axon
name came from. According to Tullis, the Dolby team did a number of
internal branding exercises, came up with a list of names, then
proceeded to go down to Howie's Game Shack in Mission Viejo, Calif., where they did some focus
testing with the gamers they found there. Most of the gamers really
latched onto “Axon” and were even more enthralled
with it when they discovered its origin lies within the nervous system
of our own body.



Here’s the explanation of an axon from Wikipedia:

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Games like
SOE's The Agency can certainly benefit from technology like Dolby Axon.

The Dolby Axon technology certainly seems like an interesting voice
communication solution for online game developers, but many of you are
probably wondering whether some developers are already working with the
Dolby Axon technology. When I quizzed Tullis about this very question,
he said that there are around a dozen companies that are under
evaluation, but he can’t discuss when we might see any of
these games on the market. However he did mention that
they’ve been “working with companies for
awhile” and they just “want to make the games sound
as good as possible.”



Finally, I wondered whether Tullis and the Dolby team had created Axon
primarily for the MMOG experience or if they’d considered
other forms of online gaming like FPSes or RTSes. In short, Tullis said
they the team had created Axon “for games” and that
the “predominant online genres were obviously FPS and
MMOGs” along with RTSes. There are obvious benefits to both
groups – walking up to someone and talking in MMOGs or team
coordination in FPSes – but Axon is certainly made with both
of those genres in mind.



Some other interesting tidbits about Dolby Axon include:

• The technology has been in development since 2004.
• The core development team is ten people, although lots of
  Dolby researchers are gamers and thoroughly enjoy working on the
  project.
• Dolby Axon’s SDK will be made available to
  developers at the Austin GDC.

One day in the future, Dolby Axon may serve as the primary line of
communication for gamers that are interested in voice. However, the
online communication gaming market is full of viable contenders to the
voice throne, and Dolby will certainly have its work cut out to make
their name synonymous with an excellent voice communication experience.