HawkVoice speech compression used in Sony Online Entertainment's new PlanetSide game
For further information, contact:
Phil Frisbie, Jr.
Hawk Software
(707) 468-9166
phil@hawksoft.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
UKIAH, CA - MAY 9, 2003 - Hawk Software announced today that Sony Online Entertainment's latest
game PlanetSide includes HawkVoice speech compression technology. HawkVoice is free and open
source code software released under the GNU Library General Public License (LGPL). Unlike
Microsoft Corporation's DirectPlay Voice, which can only be used with Windows clients and
servers, HawkVoice can be used on many different operating systems, including Windows 9x/ME,
Windows NT/2000/XP/2003, Windows CE, Pocket PC, Linux, Mac OS, and Sun Solaris. This gives
software developers the freedom to add voice chat to games that can be played on different
operating systems, use non-Windows servers, or both.
PlanetSide is a massively multiplayer first-person action online game. It is the first game of
its type to include real-time squad-based voice chat to enhance the player's experience of
fighting together with a squad and working as a team. The voice chat technology is provided by
WireRed Software's TeamSound, which uses HawkVoice to compress and decompress voice data sent
over the Internet. PlanetSide will be released for sale in North America May 20, 2003.
HawkVoice is provided as a free and open source software library in order to promote real-time
voice communication in games and other applications. Uncompressed human speech requires at
least 128 Kbps (thousand bits per second) of network bandwidth. This is much higher than the
maximum 32 to 53 Kbps of bandwidth provided by a modem. HawkVoice provides several different
types of speech compression/decompression (also referred to as codecs) that can compress human
speech from 50% (u-law at 64 Kbps) down to only 1.1% (OpenLPC at 1.4 Kbps) of the original size.
These codecs include:
Codec Kbps G.711 u-law 64 Intel/DVI ADPCM 32 GSM 13.2 LPC 4.8 CELP 4.5, 3.0, 2.3 LPC-10 2.4 OpenLPC 1.8, 1.4
Allen Drennan, CEO of WiredRed Software, has this to say about HawkVoice: "After experimenting
with other voice codec libraries and using Microsoft Windows audio codecs in our projects in the
past, we found the HawkVoice library to be much more user friendly, produce higher quality voice
compression, consume less processor time, and to be more reliable than any other voice codec
library we have ever seen."
Hawk Software also provides commercial software that can be used to enhance HawkVoice. For
example, fixed point LPC-10 speech compression for Windows CE and Pocket PC can compress speech
to less than one fifth the file size compared to the GSM compression provided by Microsoft. And
for projects that do not want to follow the LGPL, Hawk Software can provide a commercial license
for HawkVoice.
About Hawk Software
Phil Frisbie, Jr., started Hawk Software in 1997 in order to promote his own open source
programming projects. Phil works full time for the California Department of Transportation, but
puts in many hours each week with his Hawk Software projects and in providing programming and
website consulting. Until March of 2003 all Hawk Software projects were free and open source,
but Phil is now providing commercial software that enhances his free software and will help turn
Hawk Software into a profitable business.
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Copyright (c) 2003 Hawk Software. All rights reserved. All company and/or product names may
be trade names, trademarks and/or registered trademarks of the respective owners with which they
are associated.
Note to editors: If you are interested in viewing additional information on Hawk Software,
please visit the Hawk Software website at http://www.hawksoft.com . The credits for PlanetSide
can be found at http://planetside.station.sony.com/howto/manual_detail.vm?handle=6.14 .