Positional Audio
The Positional Audio module enables you to hear clients from the position they are in a supported game.
To process positional audio streams, CrossTalk uses the build-in Teamspeak 3D Positioning functionality. You need to enable that in your playback options yourself to enable audio processing on your end, since unfortunately this isn't available to the plugin API currently. Also note this setting is global, in contrast to it being visualized as being part of a playback profile. The module window tells you about the current status.
Positional Information is communicated over the Teamspeak server. You may run into trouble with harsher server flood settings. The module window allows you to change send intervals to counter that. The default values should work fine for standard server settings, however if you hit the servers flood protection, positioning data will automatically be blocked for this server and you're notified. You then might wanna wait a couple of minutes before unblocking it after adjusting your settings, so the accumulated "flood ticks" have time to decrease to normal level.
CrossTalk gets the positional information by implementing compatibility to the official Mumble 3D Positioning convention. This way, developers catch two with one, and for the user it means it's completely save to use - as (potentially) opposed to the unofficial reading of memory.
The list of currently supported games is as follows:
- Counter-Strike Source
- Day of Defeat: Source
- ezquake
- Guild Wars 2 (confirmed)
- Half Life 2: Deathmatch
- ioquake3
- Minecraft Mod
- Miscreated
- Regnum-Online
- Revenge Of The Cats: Ethernet
- Sauerbraten
- Team Fortress 2
- Warsow
It's currently not planned to implement any support that doesn't use the official convention. Hopefully this'll entice developers to implement it. Finally, while I figure a broader application of a single convention benefits everyone, I think it's only fair when Mumble maintains an edge on individual implementations while CrossTalk hopefully helps increasing Mumble Link's momentum in becoming a de facto standard. There's still a way to add games oneself via simply taking the approach the Minecraft Mod chose, which also enables you to provide to both Mumble and CrossTalk with a single mod.
- Does everyone need to download the plugin for this to work?
Yes. Only the player position is available locally. We need both your position and the position of the person talking to you.
- I use only one half of my headset, is there a way to not hear it but still enable others?
Yes. Just leave the TS Client's 3D Option disabled while the module is enabled.
- How can I see who's with me?
When you click on a client in Teamspeak, information is shown on the right side, if there is anything to show that is.
- Why send position updates while not talking at all?
There's no way to guarantee that when you beginn to talk, the position information would reach the other ends beforehand. This is to avoid that the first parts of the audio data are positioned based on potentionally very old data.