I have and never will forgive Sound Blaster for using legal costs to destroy a competitor, Aureal.
Aureal made the most unbeliveably amazing sound card, which use ray-tracing for sound, in hardware, to produce 3D sound like you are actually there. The sound engine knew the geometry of the space you were in, in your game.
I played the original Half-Life using this, and it was peak gaming.
I've often wondered why audio in games never seemed to get back to this kind of realism.
Its shocking how primitive most game engines are with audio processing. You get linear/inverse square falloff on volume over distance and perhaps reverb in some places and that's about it.
There's been some efforts to use GPU ray tracing to bring some of it back, IIRC Call of Duty from a few years ago had it, but as you say it hasn't caught on and displaced 'good enough' audio.
I also had a Vortex2 and it's not about requiring a high-end surround system, as I suspect even today there's still a significant amount of players with decent but not high-end audio. I was playing Quake3 with A3D before they patched it out with either basic stereo speakers or headphones and the placement was superb.
I think there aren't enough folks (including me) with sophisticated enough speaker setups to take advantage of it, limiting the market.
There's only so much you can do with just a left and right speaker and MAYBE a sub.
That said, it does seem like there's new interest in spatial audio, so we'll see. Maybe with some spatial audio headphones, and especially if they add head-tracking so that a sound to your left moves relative to your head (and stationary relative to your body) as you turn your head to face it.
Back when I was playing with my Aureal Vortex 2 card, locating enemies via sound was easy peasy through footsteps. That system (and card unfortunately) is now long gone. On my current day system, sound location doesn't work nearly as well, I can't tell if something is in front or behind me, I have to move my head (in-game) to figure that out. I really miss my Vortex 2 :-(.
I came here to say this. Creative did more to set back audio in video gaming than anyone other company. It boggles my mind that they killed Aureal through unsuccessful but costly-to-defend litigation, bought its assets in bankruptcy, and proceeded to do absolutely nothing with A3D.
This 1000x - Aureal and their A3D tech was amazing.
I remember ages ago when it was new, my brother and I were shoveling snow for people to get pocket money to upgrade our PC. We settled on a Turtle Beach Montego II and I adored the thing.
Of course, it was short lived since the update in Windows driver model, and the bankruptcy of Aureal, ended things.
I actually got into retro computing a few years ago and got another Montego II off Ebay cheap and I have to say, the magic is still there.
Frankly, playing something like the original Unreal is my favorite example of a vintage experience that I can't replicate any other way - 3DFX Glide has an aesthetic and responsiveness that's hard to match, analog ps/2 keyboard and mouse with no latency, VGA CRT monitor, Aureal A3D audio with some headphones.
It's a singular experience that is impossible to replicate today. And I love it.
Aureal made the most unbeliveably amazing sound card, which use ray-tracing for sound, in hardware, to produce 3D sound like you are actually there. The sound engine knew the geometry of the space you were in, in your game.
I played the original Half-Life using this, and it was peak gaming.