RoR 0.23: sounds good!

A new version is available. This one features:

• 3D sound! I changed the audio library from Audiere to OpenAL. This was a pain, but the result is cool. The sound of each truck is positionned in space, and you can hear distance attenuation and Doppler effect (the sound is picked at the camera). Works even better with a 5.1 sound system. But see below for the catch.
  
• Water for everybody: now there is three water rendering option. Basic has almost no overhead, Reflection is 2x slower to render, and Reflection+Refraction is 3x slower (but better if you can afford it).
• A port and a new road in the North st Helens terrain, with a boat. Also in the distance a very large ship, which is a work in progress.
• Several bug fixes.

Also, note that from now the trucks have their engine stopped by default (except the user-chosen truck), so you need to start them the first time you use them (press 'S').

About 3D sound: there seems to be a problem with some hardware-accelerated 3D sound card. My sound card (integrated SoundMAX) seems to have bugs in the sound attenuation function. Distance attenuation does not work properly, and some sounds are played with incorrect volume. These problems appears when the sound is hardware rendered. When the software mode is set, these problems disappears. Si I suppose the problem is in my sound card and not in my code. I am interested in your feedback, to know if on your system the hardware mode sounds as good as the software mode (e.g. does the sound level changes when the camera goes far away from the truck, in character mode), and which sound card you use.

Enjoy!

RoR, the movie

I have made a movie showing RoR in action, for those that can't run it, or hesitate to try it.
You cant see it at:

• Google Video
• YouTube

Enjoy!