Two different topics, two different questions. First topic: Most sims are missing the intricacies and the bruteness when it comes to the engine sounds, or the tires sounds for that matter. What goes into making a car sound for a racing sim, and why is it so hard to get it right? Second topic: The replay viewing is a big part of racing sims. Its not only pretty and fun to watch, but also educational and even a good judging tool. There is great sims that have crappy replay quality, and vice versa. What makes a good replay fidelity, and why isnt the fidelity to the physics in rFactor2 replay matching the great physics quality of the gameplay?
And why is it that people can't make thread titles informative, instead forcing pretty much everyone to click to see what it's about? But I digress. 1. People generally don't care about sounds. I do, so I'm not tarring everyone with the same brush here, but for the most part people like pretty things and things that feel good. Sound isn't something they think about unless it's really bad, even though it's a crucial part of the feedback in a sim. Especially because there is very little lag when it comes to sound, unlike FFB devices etc. If rF2 looked like a photo and sounded like it does now there'd be more happy people than if it sounded real but looked the way it does now. Way it goes unfortunately. 2. File size / bandwidth. If you have high fidelity set (it's default in rF2 I think) your replays of your own car are pretty good. But you'll never get the same quality for remote players, because a server trying to send out 'full' information for every car isn't going to work. Even locally it's not as easy as recording all your inputs and running them through the physics engine - that would limit you to playing or fast forwarding a replay without any way to rewind it. Instead it'll be simplified to some extent, still good enough for most purposes but not perfect if you start looking at it closely.
1. Car sounds are often fine, it's the usage of them. Our samples are very high quality, like most sims. We are not yet using them effectively. 2. Many reasons that are mainly common sense (see above). But mostly because we are not using the replay system effectively.
I actually think these are two very good questions, that aren't explored yet at least to my own satisfaction. The sonic atmosphere has a long way to go, in my over inflated opinion. I do, however, have some idea of the complexities involved with getting aquired samples to replay in the right manner, as opposed to having the sounds magically synthesized natively, as per player actions. You see, that is how most of us code here in the forums, if you hadn't already noticed. We obviously prefer that ISI code our way too - magically. Second topic - I also fail to understand how a replay cannot be a perfect replication of what the realtime experience itself was. It is just a collection of data points, after all - no matter how big and complex. Those values determine the time and place of all events that the software has the ability to record. If it can record the input why can it not reconstruct the output into a replay? How I expect I am contributing when discussing something as complex as rF2: ^Tim^me
How comes that mods usually whoops out a more brutal sound that seems more fitting? Because they concentrate more on the sounds? A studio should be able to reproduce what modders does.
RF2 sound engine is technically wayyyyyyyyy too basic. Go crank battlefield bad company 2 or battlefield 3 on a computer with a good soundcard (min 115 db, good dacs and opamps) on some quality speakers/monitors and you'll understand what a video game could sound like when a company actually tries to put some effort into it's sound engine software. It's not even about the samples, a sample is just a recording of a sound, its about all the technical things the sound engine does, dynamic range, reverb, Doppler, sound expansion, physics to sound connection, pitch shifting, resonance, etc etc etc etc etc
Probably dirtier samples which have been reprocessed through a TV set, youtube, etc, and have the sound many people want to hear.
? I'm quite sure not many modders have engines on a dyno in a good acoustic environment. What else could it be (if using the same sound engine)? It wasn't a positive or negative comment, just an answer.
The (inboard)sounds in rF2 are mostly pretty much spot on! The sample-way is the only way to go! (for the next 10 years) Greets Pete
I am a little alarmed and somewhat confused. The sound in rFactor is NOT particularly good. Like Spinelli, I have top of the range audio reproduction equipment. I also have my own studio, and have worked on audio projects since I was a kid. I have a good understanding of the mathematics and geometrical propagation of wave dynamics. Audio is a VERY well understood area of study. Sorry, but it seems to me that generally speaking the rest of the software is a long way ahead of the audio. I figured it had a long way to go. Some parts are better than others, also. +100 When I first heard Battlefield 3 on my system I was blown away (see what I did there?)
I'm not sure why you're alarmed or confused. Tim said they have very high quality samples, but aren't yet using them effectively. This should be seen as a good thing - instead of looking to 'improve' sounds by having more samples in different conditions/situations, we'll hopefully end up with those clean base samples being processed and producing good sound. 'Anyone can' use camera/TV samples to make things sound good but it's not an advancement of the engine. But I'd still assert we won't get much happening here until other areas of the game are more polished.
I do prefer the real sound experience to photorealistic graphics, and I think that its much more realistic to think that a game would have real sounds, rather than real look. I think the problem is that the makers of sims are afraid to let their hair down and mix the samples to make them better and more real. Our ears are totally different from that clinical impression of the microphone. We dont only hear the sounds, we feel them. Couple things I'd like to throw into the mix concerning audio. http://www.tracktimeaudio.com/?p=322 For replays as well as sounds for that matter, theres pretty good (as mentioned somewhere above) and then theres great. Today, I think sim should reach the great.
For me that's exactly what can go wrong with using 'dirty' samples - you end up with reverb that doesn't match the situation. You want a game to use clean samples and do the processing itself.
I think the OP is talking about (when he mentions the bruteness of the engine sounds) isn't sound quality or sample size- he's talking about how the engines will run rough at idle, the pops, bangs and backfires that racing engines make. Off throttle racing engines make over-run noises and the engine does not always run perfectly smooth. The prob with rF2 (and most sims) is that the engine sound is too smooth and constant. Especially the older cars- there's no way those WCR60's cars should have nice smooth sounding engines. Watch some clips from the 60's, those cars sounded pretty rough.
Yeah, we got a bit sidetracked there with John.Persson and Cracheur taking us down the clean vs dirty sounds argument in regards to 3rd party mods. I think if you want to work with samples, whether they are fairly long loops or very short ones you can manipulate more easily, you need to start with the clean sound and go from there. What we have at the moment is an engine that can only use one set of sounds, so to make it 'sound better' people use real life samples that sound better in many cases but give you no room to move if and when rF2/??? gives you the opportunity to alter or shape the sound to suit the situation. I think in the shorter term it doesn't seem unreasonable to think we could have samples being filtered to represent engine condition/behaviour, plus the angle it's being viewed from, along with some variable reverb and proper delay/stretch rather than pitch-shifted loops to mimic the doppler effect. I'm sure audiophiles would like a lot more than that mind you. But it seems the whole audio side basically hasn't changed since rF1 (as far as the core design goes), so hopefully we'll see something in this area eventually.
Well, I do understand that Studios uses the clean and proper way of recording it. But after that, please retouch them to sound a bit more nasty some way. I really like the immersion of a more brutal sound from engine noise. This "clean" thing we have now is decent, but it wont make you jump up'n'down in the rig really.
A good example of things that can help sound realism is iRacing flexible drivetrain implementation. It sounds so much closer to all the rl cockpit recordings. For the replays, modeling the true physics of sound based on the environment, objects positioning and surface characteristics, reverb, etc. may be too ambitious and very likely not feasible as far as computing power.
