Game Developers See Added Performance with Wwise Audio Engine Updates

Recently Audiokinetic released the latest version of its Wwise audio engine for interactive audio content used by the interactive media and gaming industries. It features an optimized run-time sound engine and an audio authoring application for creating and managing game audio content.

This latest version, Wwise 2015.1, focuses on runtime performance optimizations and authoring workflow improvements including the integration with Steinberg’s Nuendo 7 to expand the audio production workflow. Wwise offers integration into major game engines including Unity, Unreal 3, Unreal 4, CryEngine, plus Marmalade and platforms including Android, iOS, Linux, Mac, Nintendo 3DS, PlayStation, PlayStation, PlayStation Vita, Windows, Windows Phone, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Wii, and Wii U.

New Features

- Integration with Steinberg Nuendo 7

- Multiple customizable platforms per target SDK

- New event actions: “Post Event” and “Reset Playlist”

- Background User Music management

- SoundFrame additions

Performance Optimizations

- More flexibility in Conversion Settings

- Streaming optimizations via the pin to cache functionality

- CPU optimizations for RTPC

- Significant Vorbis CPU performance improvement on most platforms

Wwise Authoring Workflow Improvements

- Events and target objects are now viewable in the Advanced Profiler

- RTPC Tab: Watched game objects now display cursors in the RTPC graph view

- Incremental SoundBank generation for faster build times

- Content filtering in certain views

- Batch renaming capabilities

Pricing starts at $750 USD and is tiered by the total production budget of a project. For indie games containing a maximum of 200 media assets, Wwise is free.