[hackingonempty]

> spherical harmonics can have uses beyond lighting

This math is also used in Ambisonic surround sound though newer techniques use planewave expansion.

For games, the full-sphere encoding of Ambisonic B-format can be decoded for arbitrary speaker locations and the soundfield rotated around any axis. I'm not sure if its ever been used for a game though.

[analog31]

... also quantum mechanics. The textbook solution for the wavefunction of the hydrogen atom involves spherical harmonics.

[hackingonempty]

That fact is betrayed by the the similarity of the shapes of atomic orbitals and the sensitivity patterns of Abisonic B-format channels.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambisonics#Higher-order_ambiso...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_orbital#Orbitals_table

...and the same patterns appear on the unit disk with the Zernike polynomials, used to describe optical aberrations and more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zernike_polynomials

[mcphage]

I noticed that (similarity between the graphs and the shapes of atomic orbitals), and assumed that was what the article was about. And it wasn’t, and never brought it up, so I was thinking maybe I was confused about the similarity. So thank you for showing me I was not.

[alfiedotwtf]

lol, I was confused from the first imaging thinking this was going to be a tutorial on quantum physics then was confused even more as I scrolled

[vatsachak]

Ambisonics can give one end game audio

[bschwindHN]

end-game audio?

Or it can give game audio to one end?

[hackingonempty]

A single Ambisonic B-format recording can be shipped and at runtime decoded into any coincident or near-coincident stereo pair pointing in any direction or into any surround sound format. It is a universal format that encodes the direction and intensity of arriving sound over a full sphere.