Wake up call for sound engine :)

Discussion in 'Wish Lists' started by K Szczech, Apr 24, 2015.

  1. Nazirull Safry Paijo

    Nazirull Safry Paijo Registered

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    Need to add more volume (reverb) from afar. And wind noise at pass by.
     
  2. Ozzy

    Ozzy Registered

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    The recently added/fixed underbody scraping just added a new level of immersion. Simply stunning how one sound effect can reach this.
    Now you really fear going over curbs. [emoji6]
     
  3. wgeuze

    wgeuze Registered

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    Would be nice if the range of car sounds is fixed next :p When you're 100 meters away from a car you can barely hear it anymore... anybody who's been at a racetrack will probably agree you can hear them going around the track at least a couple of corners away :p
     
  4. Fabio Pittol

    Fabio Pittol Registered

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    I'd add to that a better control/play of the tire sound samples. Again, using the R3E as reference, there you can easily tell when you are really overdriving and scrubbing your tires (in rF2 it seems that it's always scrubbing) and also, a better sound feedback of tire locking. I know K Szczech will be pissed at me for hijacking his thread's subject, but I'll risk it. :p

    I guess this video illustrates very well what I mean (tire lock @ turn 2 / tire scrub @ turn 7):

     
  5. Emery

    Emery Registered

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    The audible tire feedback in R3E is great, but it's also unrealistic except maybe for a street car. The only tire I've ever raced on that provided that level of audible feedback was the old Yokohama A008 treaded series (A008, A008R, A008RS, A008RSII) from the late-80s to mid-90s. Slicks? Not so much. Slicks are almost always just a scraping sound unless you've lost the car at IRL or NASCAR speeds.
     
  6. wgeuze

    wgeuze Registered

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    Actually Fabio the tv cam part of that video is an example of what I meant in my previous post as well, thanks :)
     
  7. Minibull

    Minibull Member

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    And if it's at those speeds, man do they scream! Those onboard crash videos of NASCAR, the pitch of the squeal is crazy.
     
  8. Emery

    Emery Registered

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    I have to admit, I have a fondness for how the A008R would sing when you were using it at maximum grip... and squeal when you asked too much of it!
     
  9. boblevieux

    boblevieux Registered

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  10. Fabio Pittol

    Fabio Pittol Registered

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    I completely understand your point. But in my opinion, sometimes little concessions have to be made, since we'll never have the same feedback as when seated in a real race car.

    And to be honest, considering your explanation (of something I wasn't aware of), the tire locking sound is less relevant here. rF2's FFB does a fairly good job with it. My issue is more with the scrubbing. I can't hear, either live or on video, a race car tire scrubbing that much, unless the driver is REALLY overdriving it.
     
  11. Kristoff Rand

    Kristoff Rand Registered

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    I want to hear this...

     
  12. Fabio Pittol

    Fabio Pittol Registered

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    Hey Emery, I came across this video yesterday. I'm not sure how it reflects onboard, since the onboard video on this track (with Tom Coronel) is not a flying lap, but you can clearly hear tires squeeling as they brake late for some chicanes. Just like the audio from R3E.

     
  13. Spinelli

    Spinelli Banned

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    I wish game makers focused on "real" car sound modelling (which are also dynamically affected by and connected to engine, exhaust, etc. physics) rather than take the easy but "fake" way out and essentially just use clips of videotapes to play sounds.

    If I remember correctly, RBR, LFS, DR, and most versions, but not the final version, of NKP did. Eventually, one day, it will be the way all games do it but imagine where we'd be now with it if devs persisted with this much more realistic method.
     
  14. K Szczech

    K Szczech Registered

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    Not a problem - I just want to avoid the usual direction of such threads, when people talk about engine sound samples. I want the sound engine itself to be the focus here.
     
  15. Ernie

    Ernie Registered

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    Even if this thread is rather old, but IMHO the request is already valid.
    After seeing a lot of graphical improvements in rF2 the last months, i think it's time now for ISI to bring their sound engine to the next level. All competitors have improved their sound engines the last 2-3 years, but (apart from some reverb effects) rF2 is still using its ancient sound output.

    And even if simracers mostly complain about graphics in rF2 (an opinion which i for myself don't share), but i think the part which rF2 lacks most is sounds. And i'm not talking about the sounds itself, but the rF2 sound engine under the hood.
    Racing atmosphere is quite lost, when cars passing by and the engine sounds are gone after 200-300 meters. Take a look at R3E. You can even hear cars on the other side of the track. This is very immersive and i really miss that in rF2.

    @ISI: Is an overhaul of the sound engine planned or already in the works? When we could expect improvements in sound sector?

    cheers
    Ernie
     
  16. Spinelli

    Spinelli Banned

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    +111
     
  17. Satangoss

    Satangoss Registered

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    +1 for it.

    As being in race circuits often, I would rate the ambient sound in all modern simulators (external cameras and mainly spectator cameras) as, to be polite, silly. I can't speak about Raceroom because I uninstalled the game within 10 minutes after be rammed out of the track 10 times in a row by blind AIs and it'll never coming back to my hard drive.

    Surely the current external sounds are at a number of steps back compared to graphics FX and even to onboard sound. A racing car (except the recent F1 garbage) can be heard from kilometers away. In rF2 the car sound vanishes after 100 meters or so.

    Regardless, please improve the engine sound of Megane, those are terrible both onboard and outside the car.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 10, 2015
  18. peterchen

    peterchen Registered

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    Its not a sound-engine issue! Miles can do that. I modded it myself a number of times.
    Thats because sound engine wont change (which is by the way up to date (mybe not on latest version, as this doesnt always make sense as Tim already stated in the past.)).
     
  19. Ernie

    Ernie Registered

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    Ok, if it's not the sound engine (Miles), what leads to this unsatisfying and unauthentic sound experience we actually have in rF2?
    A race car is louder on the exhaust side and can be heard over long distances. And an approaching car should sound quite different comparing to a departing car (Not speaking about doppler effect).
    So where exactly is the problem, if the sound engine is capable to do these things? Just asking.

    cheers
    Ernie
     
  20. K Szczech

    K Szczech Registered

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    It's like saying rFactor 1 is like Unreal Tornament 3, because both run on DiurectX 9 :)

    There is graphics / sound API or middleware (DirectX, OpenGL, OpenAL, Miles...) and there is graphics and sound engine in the game itself (Unreal Engine, Cry Engine, gMotor...).

    Let me put it this way - if you have an aircraft combat game, your sound is processed in a different environment than in car racing game. Also, when you have an explosion, you're dealing with something different than car, because explosion sends more less the same sound in all directions, while car is something that has complex construction and may send different sounds in different direction (go back to first page and look at my Maserati MC12 example).
    Now if game engine does not make that distiction and assumes that all sound sources are the same and all environments are the same, then you will loose a lot of immersion. Also, proper environment for the sound is not just about enabling some echo or other effects. This is because if a car is next to you, you will hear its sound mostly directly, with little modification from environment, but when a car is far away, its sound will undergo a lot of changes on its way to you. So you can stand in the same spot, in the same environment, but as sound source moves around, "effects" change. This is different to what many older game engines do - just enabling certain sound effects as you enter different areas. May work for closed space FPS game, but not for an open space game like racing sim.

    Imagine a car on the other side of the building - you're not able to hear it directly. What you hear is the sound bounced of the other buildings and carried over them. Walls of buildings have certain characteristics and may change the sound while it bounces. Just like in terms of optics, walls can have different colors and the same light illuminating different walls may give different outcome.

    The job of such middleware like DirectX or Miles is to give game developers sufficient tools to build a proper game engine, but it's up to game developers to actually manage the environment and handle these middleware sound libraries in a way that somehow resembles this environment.
    So we need at least some distinction between direct line of sight and occluded objects, between open spaces, scarce buildings, dense buildings and solid walls.


    Or to put it another way - you can make DirectX 9 game engine with lighting, shadows and reflections, but you can also make DirectX 12 game engine without lighting, shadows and reflections. It's always up do game engine developers. So it's not that important which sound library you use and which version, but how your game engine is using it.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 11, 2015

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