such wrote on 2026-05-24, 19:04:

Some of the games on that list... don't even exist (X-Com: Alliance?), so always take it with a grain of salt. A3D 3.0 AFAIK also doesn't exist. Perhaps planned, but by that time Creative had already brutalized Aureal.

Wasn't Messiah a game with A3D 3.0 support? I think it makes use of the whole A3DVerb "non-modelled" (i.e. "EAX-like") reverb engine that came with the 2048 drivers (I think? Either that or 2041). Perhaps it's possible that I'm misremembering something, but I'm fairly sure I flipped between A3D and EAX and recall both settings having EAX-style reverb (with A3D having the typically pronounced positioning as well).
I also tried the Soldier of Fortune demo, yet I don't recall an A3D 3.0 option. Maybe that was only in the full retail version?

such wrote on 2026-05-24, 19:04:

AndreaColombo86 wrote on 2026-05-24, 15:34:

Thank you for that list. I was unaware A3D 3.0 existed. What we could have had…! […]
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Thank you for that list. I was unaware A3D 3.0 existed. What we could have had…!

Some games are reported as having A3D 3.0 support but I doubt that’s true. The standard was released shortly before Aureal closed up shop.

Also, some of the games in the list inaccurately report supporting A3D 2.0 (e.g. Baldur’s Gate 2).

There are games I could be interested in if they actually supported A3D 2.0:

- Neverwinter Nights
- Unreal 2
- Unreal Tournament

Does anybody know whether they do support it?

Apologies for derailing the thread with something only tangentially related, but I figured most audio aficionados who would know this stuff would hang around here.

Joseph—so it’s not like I can install the latest driver and call it a day?

Some of the games on that list... don't even exist (X-Com: Alliance?), so always take it with a grain of salt. A3D 3.0 AFAIK also doesn't exist. Perhaps planned, but by that time Creative had already brutalized Aureal.

A3D 3.0 did exist and Aureal had a deluxe soundcard offering to "push it", but it was really just the Vortex 2 chip connected to a 100MHz DSP, to handle the "premium digital audio" functions, even though Aureal had their own unused DSP design for that. Some people have managed to acquire A3D 3.0 engineering/test hardware and finalized cards that made it out of the wreckage of Aureal. Creative currently has no legal claim to anything that Aureal had, so it's possible to reverse engineer the Aureal stuff and do whatever we want with it, which at least one forum member had been doing back in the 2010's.

Thanks for clarifying. It's right on the edge of what I'd call... "existing", but interesting info nonetheless.

EDIT: deleted

AndreaColombo86 wrote on 2026-05-25, 10:35:

This is what A3D 3.0 would have brought to the table according to AI:

Using AI for getting retro PC gaming information often leads to inaccuracies. If you can't find a hard source, it might be better refrain from posting AI slop here. As the very post on this forum can be referenced as a "source" by some future AI search, leading to even more inaccuracies.

Also, a lot of people here frown upon the use of AI, myself included. You're less likely to receive help from people who have actual first-hand knowledge about a subject if you resort to AI "information". For my part, I'd rather not pollute this thread with AI slop, so please keep it to a minimum here.

My apologies. I’ve deleted the post.