Positional Audio: threat boosting may be masking distance and occlusion cues

SUMMARY

I believe Battlefield 6's enemy audio can provide good directional information while giving much less reliable information about distance, occlusion and vertical separation. My working hypothesis is that some of the gameplay-based enemy prioritisation added to improve footstep audibility may be interfering with the acoustic relationships that allow a listener to judge physical distance and obstruction.

In short: enemy audio can be highly audible without being spatially interpretable.

BACKGROUND

I have close to 3,000 hours in Battlefield 1 and at one point reached 3rd globally for MVP. Sound was a major part of my BF1 gameplay. Using headphones with Creative Sound Blaster SBX virtual 7.1, I became able to rotate towards enemy sound sources extremely quickly and often place my reticle very close to the correct location before visually acquiring the player.

In Battlefield 6 I initially used the same SBX system. I later moved to a personalised HRTF-based virtual 7.1 system through Equalizer APO, customised using measurements of my head and ears and including headphone-specific correction. I extensively tested both during actual gameplay and found the personalised system better, with my longer-term gameplay tracking also indicating improved performance.

However, the problems described below remain, which makes me suspect the main limitation is upstream of the final headphone virtualisation stage.

THE PROBLEM

Horizontal direction can sometimes work extremely well in BF6. I can hear an enemy, rotate towards them and identify the approximate bearing very quickly.

Distance, obstruction and vertical position are much less dependable.

Examples include:

• Footsteps sounding extremely close when the enemy is substantially farther away.
• Players on another floor sounding as though they are on the same level.
• Difficulty distinguishing a player in the same acoustic space from one behind a wall or in an adjacent room.
• Apparent footstep distance changing in ways that do not seem proportional to actual movement.
• Excellent localisation in one situation followed by misleading information from apparently similar cues in another.

The problem is therefore not simply whether an enemy can be heard. It is whether the sound accurately communicates where that enemy physically exists.

POSSIBLE CAUSE

The BF6 patch history shows several changes intended to improve enemy movement awareness. These include increased enemy movement volume, increased distant movement audibility, additional emphasis for enemies behind the player, offscreen enemy boosting, changes to obstructed-footstep levels, higher footstep priority to reduce culling, revised distance separation and direction-dependent ducking of the player's own weapon when a nearby enemy is present.

I understand why these systems exist. Being killed by somebody you never heard is frustrating. However, I wonder whether the accumulated prioritisation is now interfering with the natural cues required to estimate distance and occlusion.

A listener judges distance using several interacting signals, including overall level, spectral balance, high-frequency attenuation, direct-to-reflected sound ratio, transient definition, reverberation and obstruction filtering. A distant or obstructed player would normally become quieter, duller and more dominated by reflected sound. If BF6 then increases that player's prominence because they are behind the listener, offscreen or otherwise considered an important threat, the listener can receive conflicting information: some characteristics of the sound suggest "distant or obstructed" while its overall prominence suggests "very close". The direction can still be correct, but the perceived distance or amount of obstruction becomes much harder to judge.

That is very close to what I experience during BF6 gameplay.

WHY CONSISTENCY MATTERS

In Battlefield 1, repeated exposure allowed me to build a very stable relationship between what I heard and where another player actually was. The important quality was not simply loud footsteps; it was consistency. A particular combination of loudness, filtering, reflections and direction repeatedly corresponded to a particular physical relationship between me and another player.

That consistency allowed the process to become almost automatic.

BF6 is much harder to learn in the same way because similar acoustic cues can apparently correspond to very different distances, levels of obstruction or vertical positions. Increasing audibility therefore does not necessarily increase positional information.

SUGGESTED TEST

It may be useful to test the complete enemy-footstep mix at fixed distances such as:

3 m -> 5 m -> 10 m -> 15 m -> 20 m

Then repeat the same movement with:

• Direct line of sight.
• A wall between players.
• The enemy above or below the listener.
• The enemy in front versus behind.
• The enemy onscreen versus offscreen.

The important question would be whether the resulting acoustic progression remains predictable.

Does a player at 15 m consistently sound farther away than one at 5 m even when rear/offscreen threat processing is active?

Does adding a wall consistently increase the perception of obstruction?

Does a player below the listener reliably sound different from one on the same floor?

It may also be informative internally to repeat these tests with threat-based boosts temporarily disabled. If distance and obstruction become easier to judge, that would suggest the underlying spatial-audio system is not the main problem; the interaction of the additional prioritisation layers may be.

CONCLUSION

I am not suggesting that all enemy prioritisation should necessarily be removed. The systems presumably exist to solve legitimate audibility problems.

However, I think BF6 may currently be prioritising:

"Make sure the player hears that an enemy is a threat"

at the expense of:

"Accurately communicate where that enemy exists in the acoustic environment."

For me, BF6 can often tell me very clearly:

"There is an enemy behind-left."

But it is much less reliable at telling me:

"The enemy is approximately this far away, behind this amount of geometry, and on this vertical level."

The distinction I would encourage the audio team to consider is:

AUDIBILITY versus INTERPRETABILITY.

Making an enemy more audible does not necessarily make their position more interpretable.