Photo Credit: JBL

By Joe Lonergan

An advanced type of spatial audio has been developed to help blind gamers play first-person shooter games. It uses JBL Quantum’s advanced head tracking and Spatial Audio technology to emulate echolocation, which is used to detect the location of objects reflected by sound, similar to what bats and dolphins use to get to grips with their surroundings.

First-of-its-kind Software
The new, first-of-its-kind software utilises cutting-edge AI, and algorithms learned by machines, to translate in-game visual elements and obstacles into audio cues, allowing players to explore their gaming surroundings through sounds. JBL and Harman the makers of this innovative software are making it open source in the hope that developers will take it on and adapt it into their games.

Grace Koh, of JBL’s parent company, said “This is just a first step towards accessibility in first-person shooter games. We are making it open-source and hoping that brands and developers can adopt it for their games, and even contribute to its improvement.

This is great news for gaming fans who want to try popular shooter games like the next version of Call of Duty or Counterstrike. The last year has been very positive for gamers with the amazing accessibility options in Forza Motorsport and Mortal Kombat just to mention a couple but there were many more making strides in the vision-impaired accessibility parts of the gaming world.

The Evolution of Spatial audio

It looks like spatial Audio is one of those innovations that is transferring its software skills to many areas of blind and vision-impaired people’s lives and with the improvements in smart glasses and VR headsets we will see many more use cases for it including Virtual Reality simulations like in the examples of gaming above.

Expanding accessibility beyond gaming

Most people would be more familiar with spatial audio from use with mobility apps like Soundscape Community, in which it can give you a better idea and direction of where things are in 3D sound from a GPS-located map and if used with a compatible pair of AirPods it has head tracking capabilities.

Microsoft Teams have recently added a spatial sound feature to help identify where the sound is coming from on the screen so the person with low vision will know what direction to look.

Spatial audio has also widely been used in movies and series from Apple TV Plus, Netflix, and other streaming platforms.

In Conclusion

This could be the start of a revolution in gaming with the help of JBL Quantum’s advanced head tracking and Spatial Audio technology and who knows what possibilities await us and we imagine it will broaden into many different types of games.