{"id":7001,"date":"2019-04-25T06:39:06","date_gmt":"2019-04-25T13:39:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/garage-en-us\/?p=7001"},"modified":"2019-06-12T14:37:34","modified_gmt":"2019-06-12T21:37:34","slug":"new-garage-project-bakes-accessibility-into-game-development-via-responsive-spatial-audio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/garage\/blog\/2019\/04\/new-garage-project-bakes-accessibility-into-game-development-via-responsive-spatial-audio\/","title":{"rendered":"New Garage project bakes accessibility into game development via responsive spatial audio"},"content":{"rendered":"

At Game Developers Conference 2019, we shared an early peek at Responsive Spatial Audio for Immersive Gaming, a Microsoft Garage project.<\/a> The Unity plug-in helps developers infuse accessibility into games by making it easy to annotate game objects with descriptive text and present it to players through interactive audio cues. The project is now available worldwide in the Unity Store.<\/p>\n

Baking accessibility into game development<\/h2>\n

A number of hackers have joined the cause to make games more accessible. For example, Ear Hockey<\/a>, a Microsoft Garage project, is a game designed around the blind and low vision community, and the Xbox Adaptive Controller<\/a>, a Hackathon project turned Garage Wall of Famer, is a game controller designed for gamers of all abilities. The Garage project team members who developed Responsive Spatial Audio are taking a different approach, focusing on the game developer by baking accessibility right into an easy, drag-and-drop interaction toolkit.<\/p>\n

With Responsive Spatial Audio, game developers can tag 3D objects with descriptive text, and the experience captures these tags and spatial coordinates to help players navigate. As players traverse through the game world and encounter tagged objects and designated points of interest, they are guided by audio cues via a built-in, text-to-speech API. An accessible FPS controller presents relevant descriptions at the right time by monitoring player movement, scanning their surroundings for metadata, and cuing spatial audio guidance for objects in the frame of view.<\/p>\n

\"Responsive<\/p>\n

Key features to provide a more accessible experience<\/h2>\n

Responsive Spatial Audio offers a number of features that make prioritizing accessibility easy.<\/p>\n

Accessible FPS Controller<\/strong> Convey object descriptions within the player’s frame of view via audio cues and adjust the viewing frustum length and arc<\/p>\n

Annotate Game Objects<\/strong> Tag and manage objects with descriptive text\u2014tag once and descriptions appear everywhere the object does<\/p>\n

Vantage Point Objects<\/strong> Add and manage vantage points, or invisible doorframe-like points of interests that convey a whole view (as opposed to objects within the viewing frustum). Present different descriptions based on the direction the player is facing<\/p>\n

Accessible Navigation<\/strong> Aid player navigation with a suite of interaction tools including:<\/p>\n