Do Reflect and Portals work correctly when emitter and listener are in different rooms?

Question

I am using UnrealEngine4 Wwise integration.  v 6524.

 

Reflect appears to calculate reflections only for emitters that are in the same room as the listener.

This creates a discontinuity when the listener crosses a portal boundary into/out of a room containing the emitter.  It creates significant audible artifacts.

Is there a way to mitigate this? (e.g. blend/fader in Reflection sounds, or better, calculate reflections everywhere)?

Answer 1

Reflect does not calculate reflections based on Rooms and Portals, it instead looks for Surface Reflectors. Both systems don't interact with each other geometrically speaking. If a surface reflector blocks the opening of your portal, you won't get reflections when the listener is on the other side of said portal. I am assuming here that your room and surface reflector volume is the same. I suggest you separate them and have an opening in your surface reflector volume at the portal's position.

Comments

Thank you very much for this answer, makes sense and seems to be exactly what's happening.

I was using UE4 AKSpatialAudioVolumes with the Acoustic Surfaces enabled to make the walls automatically be added as reflectors (why my room and reflector geo were the same as you noted).

Would be a nice UE4 integration feature to have the portals make boolean holes in the room geometry before exporting said geo as reflectors.

Anything like that on the horizon?

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It's a feature we have in mind but is not in the scope right now. It's true it would be more user friendly!