In any game production, the sound designers will have to determine certain limits as to how comprehensive and detailed the soundscape should be. Good practice is to define project limit behaviors early in the development, so Wwise will stay within the configured boundaries.

To conform to the project settings set by the team, Wwise uses Virtual Voice Behaviors. If the project setting limits are exceeded (like when there are more voice instances than the Max Voice Instance Limit), a voice will become virtual and increase performance, as described earlier.

The first step in configuring Virtual Voice Behavior is to head into the general Project Settings.

In this view, it’s possible to set limits and volume thresholds for each individual platform.

In the Platforms group box, you’ll find each platform in the project, along with Volume Threshold and Max Voice Instances for each.

When these values are exceeded, Wwise refers to the Virtual Voice Behaviors defined in the Property Editor’s Advanced Settings tab, which can be found in every Audio Object.

The Volume Threshold defines the lowest volume level before voices become virtual. Let’s demonstrate this with the use of the Ambient_Crystal_Hum Event triggered on the crystals in the Cave.

When you walk away from a crystal, the sound will follow the attenuation curve and reduce the crystal sound volume. When the volume gets below -80, its Virtual Voice Behavior will take over and the voice will not process the audio file, apply reverb, and so on.

The Max Voice Instance limit is the amount of voices that you allow in runtime. When there are more voices than allowed, the voices with the lowest priority will become virtual, unless they’re set to continue anyway.

Once the Volume Threshold and Max Voice Instance Limit is defined in the Project Settings, you’ll mainly work with Virtual Voice Behaviors on the individual audio objects. Based on the Certification Runtime Performance guidelines (Lesson 0), let’s define the Virtual Voice Project Settings:

The Volume Threshold and Max Voice Instance properties should always be set depending on what type of game you’re making. Do not try to set Playback Limits individually for your Audio Objects, but instead set a meaningful Volume Threshold and Max Voice Instance limit, and let Wwise handle the Voice management by priorities and your Virtual Voice Behavior settings.