Building Interactive Networked Musical Environments Using q3osc

Interactive networked musical gaming environments designed as control systems for external music and sound programming languages can be built using the q3osc Quake III/ioquake3 gaming mod. Bi-directional support for the Open Sound Control (OSC) messaging protocol compiled into the game engine allows for the real-time tracking, sonification, spatialization and third-party control of game entities, clients and environmental parameters. Reactive audio environments ranging from abstract multi-user musical performance spaces to representative acoustic models of physical space can be constructed using either a standard user-centric audio perspective or a potentially more immersive and inclusive space-centric perspective. Issues of space and perspective are discussed as related to the distribution of performance space and sonified environment across both local and wide-area networks.