Requirements, Conformance and Extensions

The specification has to guarantee a minimum number of resources. However, implementations are encouraged to compete on performance, available resources, and output quality.

There will be an OpenAL set of conformance tests available along with the open source sample implementation. Vendors and individuals are encouraged to specify and implement extensions to OpenAL in the same way OpenGL is extensible. Successful extensions will become part of the core specification as necessary and desirable. OpenAL implementations have to guarantee backwards compatibility and ABI compatibility for minor revisions.

The current sample implementation and documentation for OpenAL can be obtained from openal.org. OpenAL is also available from the the OpenAL CVS repository. For more information on how to get OpenAL from CVS also see Loki Software CVS.