Re: [Flightgear-devel] OpenAL/Alut problem

[Karsten K. <kar...@kr...>]

Hi Stephen,

Am Freitag, 20. Januar 2006 17:28 schrieb Stephen Miller:
> Hi: FG graphics/joystick work fine on my Linux FC4 system, but no sound.
> I've been working on this problem for weeks, with no success. My system
> uses ALSA, and am able to get the "ordinary" Linux event sounds to work OK
> (opening, closing windows etc). I can also put "test" sounds (.wav) files
> through the system OK.
>
>
>
> 1) OpenAL installed OK, but but not the alut portion. It says missing
> references in the hello_world.c file. Trying to follow the procedure in the
> README file, but no luck so far. Is alut required in order to provide sound
> in FlightGear?
You are using Fedora Core. Did you tried using the rpms befor baking your own 
openAL?

> 2) So far, the only executable binary found under openal is
> "openal-configure". Is this correct? I would have expected something like
> "OpenAL" to start the application.

openAL is just a library as the libc. The only purpose it has, is including 
openAL into other Application to have sound. The app "openal-configure" you 
mentioned, is for autotools/autoconf. You, as a person, do not need them at 
all, to run anything having openAL support enabled.
> 3) The docs say that I should have a ".openalrc" file, which requires an
> added statement, but all I can find is "sample.openalrc".  I've since
> created the file, with only one line, as stated in the FlightGear
> README.sound file. I've put this file in both my home dir and under
> /...FlightGear/data, no change.
Correct, you need a file called ".openalrc" in your /home/stephan. It needs to 
have a dot in the beginning.

What about writing down here the content you have in your .openalrc?

I assume your configuration will look like this:

(define devices '(native alsa sdl esd arts null))

If you look some lines down in README.sound, you'll see how to use ALSA.
Better you first try a 2.0 sound config:

(define devices '(alsa))
(define speaker-num 2)
(define alsa-out-device "hw:0,0")

> 4) I've studied and attempted to fix the problem, but my experience is
> limited: Used to Linux, but only know a little "C".
I doubt that you have to fix something regarding the source of openal. :)

> It would seem that I'm still missing something, don't know how to start
> OpenAL or still need alut. If I had some idea of where to look, I could at
> least investigate before "dumping" the numerous files required for a pro to
> analyze it.
Better you simply do it. Do you compile FGFS at your own? Does the configure 
command complain about a missing alut-lib?


Karsten