OpenAL is an environmental 3D audio library, which can add realism to a game by simulating attenuation (degradation of sound over distance), the Doppler effect (change in frequency as a result of motion), and material densities.

[5] After the demise of Loki, the project was maintained for a time by the free software/open source community, and implemented on NVIDIA nForce sound cards and motherboards.

Since 1.1 (2009), the sample implementation by Creative has turned proprietary,[citation needed] with the last releases in free licenses still accessible through the project's Subversion source code repository.

[6] Ryan C. Gordon, a Loki veteran who went on to develop Simple DirectMedia Layer, started a new mailing list and website at OpenAL.org in January 2014.

The general functionality of OpenAL is encoded in source objects, audio buffers and a single listener.

From a programmer's perspective, very little additional work is required to make this happen in an existing OpenGL-based 3D graphical application.

Unlike the OpenGL specification, the OpenAL specification includes two subsections of the API: the core consisting of the actual OpenAL function calls, and the ALC (Audio Library Context) API which is used to manage rendering contexts, resource usage and locking in a cross platform manner.

Individual vendors are thereby able to include their own extensions into distributions of OpenAL, commonly for the purpose of exposing additional functionality on their proprietary hardware.