[vorbis] seeking information

[Jack Moffitt]

> I just subscribed to the list and already have a couple of questions ;) I
> read the FAQ and skimmed through the archives but I'd rather get up- to date
> information and not rely on what I read in old posts.
> 
> Are there any games/ mods using Ogg Vorbis?

Yes.  Two commercial releases: Operation Flashpoint and the new Star
Trek game both use Vorbis.  many other games will probably use vorbis in
the future.  There are probably a handful of non-mainstream games as
well.  

> Are there any other tools despite standalone music players using Ogg Vorbis?

Besides games?  Yes.

There are a few Virtual DJ apps.  There's icecast (streaming media
server).  And Sonic Foundry has added vorbis support to Sound Forge,
ACID and Siren.  I assume it will be in Vegas and other products from
them as well.   There are CoolEdit filters too.

> How fast is decompression? How big is the memory overhead for decompression?

Generally about 3-5% on p3 or so.  beta4 was considerably faster than
beta3, and the next release should be considerably faster still.
There's lots more possible optimization, and we haven't really done much
assembly optimization yet.

> How many people are actively working on Ogg Vorbis?

4-5 people working on it quite regularly, and probably upwards of 10-12
with active interests who regularly hang out, help out, and contribute
in other ways than coding on the main things.

> Is there funding behind Ogg Vorbis or are all contributors working on it for
> free?

iCast used to fund it to the tune of 3-4 fulltime people on it.  Since
november we've been continuing on our own funds, and recent have started
a non-profit and begun to raise money.  There's enough interest in
vorbis already that we spend some time on vorbis related contracts.

> What's the roadmap for Ogg Vorbis? I read that the decompression code hasn't
> been optimised yet so I'm wondering whether there is an ETA for that or not.

The loose timeline for a 1.0 is sometime this summer.  monty may smack
me for that, so don't quote me on this.  The roadmap for 1.0 is:

optimization
new floor code (floor1)
channel coupling
cascading codebooks

Someone will chime in if I've left something out.  None of this is
really going to affect games developmeent except floor1 and optimization
(floor1 is supposedly much faster than floor0).

> Maybe some of the questions might sound strange but I'm trying to get a
> broad overview and am wondering whether Ogg Vorbis would be suitable for
> game development :) From a development point of view my main concerns are
> stability and decoding speed.

We're targeting you guys.  If something's not to your liking, we are
doing something wrong :)  Please let us know if you have any questions.

jack.

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