IASIG at 2016 GDC

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The 22nd Annual IASIG Town Hall Meeting at GDC 2016 yielded some great new ideas, and interest in reviving some previous ones. Prior to GDC the IASIG steering committee solicited questions for the town hall and we received and discussed these issues on the floor with participants. You can view the video of the Town Hall Meeting on Facebook here. Topics discussed included:

  • LUF level targets for SFX and Music. Standards for LUFs and LUF measurement. Length of samples. (Michael Schichino)

  • IASIG Mixer - The good news is we had record turnout for the mixer. The bad news is we’ve outgrown both our existing sponsorship levels and the Thirsty Bear venue. We will be exploring new venues and opportunities with our sponsors. Allen Antoine volunteered to help work with Steve Horowitz to find a new location.

  • Michael Sweet suggested offering priority entrance to the IASIG mixer by going to the town hall. We will be discussing this option as well.

  • Michael Sweet also recommended a Breaking Games for Audio Mischief Working Group. Exploring implementation in games, offering examples of audio that was done well or not-so-well and why.

  • Bonnie Bogovich proposed an internship and mentorship program. Similar to what Dren did scheduling time for first time GDC audio people. The mentorship could have different tracks (Music, Sound Design, Dialog, Implementation and Programming).

  • Another topic was signal processing supported by GPU rather than the CPU. With fewer people using dedicated hardware audio accelerators anymore, offloading processing to different hardware remains important. It was recommended we talk to Nvidia and AMD to create standards in graphics cards to support audio. This is a Working Group possibility if people are interested.

  • With many people attending the sound design demo derby at GDC Jabari Alii recommended that more game examples should be available for sound design demo derby. People could use game jam games and add audio code. Sponsor game jams. Get known titles to play with.

  • Jabari also recommended a demo reel hangout.

  • 3D audio seemed to present some confusion among people attending sessions at GDC. For example, people were referring to 3D spatialized audio as localized audio in other sessions so it may be of value to publish a glossary. The IASIG could publish a specific description of the difference between non-spatialized audio and spatialized audio and provide some clear guidance while clearing up that localized typically refers to translations. It was mentioned that at least one glossary exists as a product of Project Bar-BQ so that may serve as a starting point for those interested in taking on a relatively small project like this.

  • We cleared up some confusion about availability of IASIG documents. All publications are free and accessible on the website. To participate and work on documents in progress, you need to be a member.

  • It was recommended that we consider establishing Twitch streams for hangouts and workshops, and showing our workflow.

  • IXMF revitalization came up and at least one attendee knows someone in his office who may wish to work on this. We’ll keep everyone posted if press is made here.

  • Damian Kastbaur spoke about IESD loudness recommendations and suggested that IASIG adopt the standard as-is. Once adopted, we could work on updating it. We would need someone to chair this process, conduct a vote and working group, and a deadline for publishing an addendum. Any volunteers?

  • Scott Looney graciously offered to help us maintain our website so look for more updates on this soon.

If any of the ideas we discussed are of interest to you and you want to play an active role in helping us with them, or you have new ones, as always we welcome your feedback. Just use the Contact Us link here and let us know what you’d like to talk about!

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We've posted some fun photos from our annual mixer at GDC below.