Audio Feedback Thread

We first used raytracing in DiRT 2 to create reflections off of buildings, this went in to F1 after that, but some people didn't like it so it was eventually removed.. they were using IR based ambiences at one point but I don't know what they do now.

Quite a few FPS games use speed of sound as part of their realism. It's not something we're considering at the moment.

Thanks, glad you like the improvements. I'm battling with performance right now to get a hotfix done. It's all well having one car with full audio, but then trying to squeeze another 8+ traffic cars is rather problematic
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Hi, I've not seen a single other report for this issue and I'm afraid I don't run a modded version of the game so am no expert. I think it's better for you to raise a ticket with support for this problem.

 

Yeah, the system in effect recreated passby's as you went past buildings. I first noticed the phenomenon when recording the Force India F1 team at their pre-season test at Silverstone back in 2009 where the recorder I had set up on the start finish straight was picking up, all be it VERY quietly, the sound of the car passing before the car had actually passed.. so that gave me the idea. Admittedly, whilst I wanted to persue the development, some people hated the idea and after a few ideas it got dropped.

Have a listen to a gave called Squad, which deals with both speed of sound and how that sound changes over distance. I'm not sure why you think it's "ridiculous" that we don't support speed of sound. We prioritise everything, and it's simply not a high priority for audio when we have a lot to do based around the vehicles and driving those vehicles.

Delaying the trigger of an event based on distance is absolutely fine for shot one shot sounds, but for a looping sound which is constantly moving around this means increasing or decreasing the amount of delay in real time which would be rather expensive. Or if you use a DSP delay to record the sound and delay the playback of the sound, instead of delaying the triggers, you then have the issue that the only way to make the sound come closer or further away would be to change the sample rate internally of the delay, which would then affect the pitch of the recorded sound within the 'memory' of the delay.

As you've probably noticed with traffic, we're experiencing a few performance issues at the moment with the audio.

 

Yeah, I think we're talking about very different things here. I'm talking about true speed of sound - the time something takes to get from a point emitter in the distance, to the listener (camera). I think you're talking about basic reflection of sound, which I've already said many times in this thread that it is on our to-do list.

 

We're getting closer to resolving this. Upping to 512 voices, as you're probably aware, isn't helping.
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Thank you, I'm glad you're enjoying them. A lot were recorded back in the mid 00's for a game which subsequently got cancelled.

The setup for forced induction is in the vehicles' engine.jbeam file, so for the 200BX which is simply called a coupe you need coupe_engine.jbeam

You'll find a section for the different stages of turbo and the one you're talking about is Turbo_07>turbo_bov_race

"turbocharger": {
"bovSoundFileName":"event:>Vehicle>Forced_Induction>Turbo_07>turbo_bov_race",
"hissLoopEvent":"event:>Vehicle>Forced_Induction>Turbo_07>turbo_hiss_race",
"whineLoopEvent":"event:>Vehicle>Forced_Induction>Turbo_07>turbo_spin_race",

So you can put that into the turbo section of any other engine.jbeam. As you look through those jbeam files you'll find a variety from Turbo_01 to 07 and there are normal, tuned and race versions, so

Turbo_07>turbo_bov
Turbo_07>turbo_bov_tuned
Turbo_07>turbo_bov_race

These aren't different sounds, simply more powerful versions.

This is the same for turbo_hiss and turbo_spin

A turbo sound selector would indeed be a nice idea,

Hope that helps,

m
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Lets just say there were a lot of politics there. I ruffled a few feathers when I joined, and whilst I was there lol, but (without trying to sound too egotistical) you only have to listen to the difference between Race Driver GRID, where I joined 6 months before release and DiRT 2 where I was leading the audio development from the beginning - new tools and technology ideas, new car recording processes (throwing out every recording they have previously made)... so for me it was worth ruffling those feathers.

Beam is completely different from the audio aspect where we're trying to be realistic (which is always not going to be true without real world dynamic range) and everything is driven by the physics engine. Everything. Whereas your DiRT's or Need for Speeds or Forzas or whatever will have specific audio code written to do things that the game engine doesn't do, our game engine has to do everything,... and it has to do it properly... That's the main reason why things take longer, and are more often more difficult to do than on someone elses project.... (this is what I particularly like about Beam - it's challenging me as a sound designer)

 

It may be related to the performance issues we're having at the moment. We think once these are resolved, the general latency we've observed may also get reduced... at least, we hope....

 

We are experiencing issues with sounds being dropped from memory and buffers, and queuing and loading/reloading of audio events. If the horn isn't pre-loaded, which it isn't, then it is being delayed because of this issue. The second press works because it is then in memory for a certain period of time.

 

Are there only 7 turbo sounds, and have tuned and race variants? How about superchargers then? Is there a full list of these sounds?

 

There are only 7 turbo variants at the moment, yes. The tuned and stock versions simply don't use the whole of the sample. Have a listen and I think you'll understand. Yes, there are 4f supercharger variants as well. I'm not at the work computer right now, but it's easy enough to figure out for yourself if you look at the engine jbeams of models which use a supercharger.
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Dunno, maybe it was this - https://www.mcvuk.com/development-news/heard-about-dirt-3/ Can't remember talking about height back then though.

Yeah, the many of the sound guys at Codies are doing great things. There's a number of them who are very passionate about vehicle sound - I was really pleased when they took up my job offers

Well Polyphony have been doing the whole hybrid synthetic thing for a while. We're investigating it, but currently I'm not so happy with the final results. You can't beat a proper berspoke car recording. A recording is just a lot more difficult to manipulate whilst maintaining realism, which is a lot of what Beam is about, so we suffer in terms of final car audio result using very generic sounding samples, so that we do get a difference in sound with all those various changes you can make to the powertrain.

I've not read any Forza x reviews lately, but certainly Horizon seems to have taken a wrong turn. I know they were blocked by US management for a long time from using granular synthesis, which I'm sure caused some issues considering the guy who made the Codies system is at Playground, but lately they do appear to have lost their way somewhat.

 

Hey - I don't really know what STUTUTU is, and you explain further? All I can say is that I'm being quite, um, 'compulsive' that the pops we use are from a vehicle with the same engine configuration, and the Sunburst is a 4-pot, so I guess the answer is 'unlikely'.... for the Sunburst at least... but for others, it all depends on what source material we can get.

As for turbo flutter, a few of them are quite fluttery, already don't you think?