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OPREP - vector-based multichannel panning

http://dev.arma3.com/post/oprep-audio-roadmap-update

Did they add this recently or have I missed it?

we will move things much closer to industry standard

Funny bit because it means BI is committed to stick to sucky stereo panning as this is what's the current industry standard :)

It's good they're going to improve the 2D panning at least.

EDIT:

Vote for True 3D audio in ArmA

http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=24328

Edited by Bucic

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Implementing HRTF 3D audio based on binaural recorded sources would also mean to rerecord all existing audio. It is impossible to use the existing mono/stereo sounds, and afaik there is absolutely no stock material with weapons and military vehicles recorded in binaural style.

Well, have fun BI... This means month of work to only get the sounds done (btw, im free to hire ;))

Next thing to look at is the real time calculation. There are many, many factors to consider (i'm not a programmer, so there might be a lot of more):

- Where is it coming from (direction horizontal, vertical)

- What are the surroundings? Landside, forrest, urban...

- Reflections and damping (flat hard surface, structured hard surface, soft surface, .....)

- time-of-arrival differences

- Is the listener static or moving? If moving, all has to be recalculated constantly. Even if only the head is moving it's direction

... just to name a few and this is only ONE source.

The playback to simulate a real 3D sound is mostly based on two things: time-of-arrival difference between left and right ear, and the roominformation.

You're facing north and the shot is coming from north north/west at. So the sound traveling to your right ear takes longer than to your left ear.

Simulating the height is done by altering the frequency response AND time-of-travel difference.

Simulating direction, heigt positioning AND distance is time-of-arrival difference and altering the frequnecy for height PLUS again altering the frequency to simulate the air damping PLUS volume correction based on sound level reduction formula.

Ok, this was VR, let's ro to stratis...

Imagine you have some houses to your right and on your south/west, 50m distance. Behind those houses is a hill with a forrest 75m away. Now you not only have the direct sound, but also multible indirect soundsources with differend surfaces and directions who want to be simulated. Now it is direct sound ((t-o-a horizontal) + (t-o-a vertical + freq height) + freq air damping + SPL reduction distance) + (all this for the reflection from houses right + surface damping frequency) + (all this for the reflection from houses s/w + surface damping frequency) + (all this for the reflection from hill with forrest + surface damping frequency).

And again, this is only ONE SOUND and the listener is NOT MOVING. Now imagine a huge battle with many of those sources and their calculations and you are running around...

So who is calculating all this? Arma Engine? I'm not sure the engine can handle this at it's current state, and we all know that Arma and performance are not always the best friends.

Those are just some thoughts, and i'm sorry if some stuff might not clear enough. It's hard to explain such stuff in english ;)

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@audiocustoms

Have you missed that bit from my issue report? ;)

Note:

You can test true 3D audio right now by watching some HRTF demos or by enabling it in any existing game that uses OpenAL.

http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/1fzonq/

There is no game I know of that feature binaural samples and yet...

No, it won't magically enable any environmental effects but that's another story.

I suggest you first do some reading on what has been achieved in the subject in the 90's (in actual games, not in mad audio-scientist den). It's just easier that way, to have some basis. To me, personally, the subject doesn't require any discussions. The 90's perspective being exactly the reason.

Edited by Bucic

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@Bucic

So, what do you want to tell me? That my presentation of simple audio physics is wrong?

I don't get your statement...

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@Bucic

So, what do you want to tell me? That my presentation of simple audio physics is wrong?

I don't get your statement...

Merely that the problems you've listed are mostly not an issue for a basic* true 3D audio implementation. You also seem to be presenting the subject as a resource-heavy close-to-impossible non-existing tech. As I've mentioned already there's literally nothing to discuss in the subject of attainability of true 3D audio.

*which would be of stellar improvement anyway.

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Does anyone else here thinks that the enviroment sounds are to quiet? I scarcely hear birds or crickets, and if I turn up the volume to finally hear them as loud as in real life - sitting here with windows open and the birds are noisy like hell - , the gunshots are way too loud, they make my ears bleed.

In addition I think there should be more varity, trees creaking, goat and sheep noises etc..

Edited by R3vo

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Does anyone else here thinks that the enviroment sounds are to quiet? I scarcely hear birds or crickets, and if I turn up the volume to finally hear them as loud as in real life - sitting here with windows open and the birds are noisy like hell - , the gunshots are way too loud, they make my ears bleed.

In addition I think there should be more varity, trees creaking, goat and sheep noises etc..

It's not that the enviroment is too quiet, it's actually the gunshots which are too loud.

I'm in the same exact situation. It's driving me crazy and it's putting me off from playing. I have 0 experience and I'm seriously considering doing a mod that just reduces the ear-shattering loudness of all the weapon sounds.

Edited by FrankHH

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Agreed. Gunshots, explosions and vehicles are so loud so I'm forced to lower my game volume to 25-40% but then ambient and other sounds are lost.

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It's not that the enviroment is too quiet, it's actually the gunshots which are too loud.

I'm in the same exact situation. It's driving me crazy and it's putting me off from playing. I have 0 experience and I'm seriously considering doing a mod that just reduces the ear-shattering loudness of all the weapon sounds.

Then let's hope they not only focus on fancy features but also on sound balancing.

Once thing I forgot to mention is, I miss the sound of doves and or owls in the night and early morning.

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'Morning.

I just wanted to state that the sounds of jet missiles and rockets are no longer triggered/played from the cockpit (devbuild). It is probably related to audio twearking...

Disregard this comment if the issue has been reported or stated on the tracker already!

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Agreed. Gunshots, explosions and vehicles are so loud so I'm forced to lower my game volume to 25-40% but then ambient and other sounds are lost.

Oh, so that's what it is! No wonder I can't hear footsteps.

http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=22229

I haven't found any other issues reported against the problem.

Edited by Bucic

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Agreed. Gunshots, explosions and vehicles are so loud so I'm forced to lower my game volume to 25-40% but then ambient and other sounds are lost.

Yeah gun shots could be reduced a little so we could hear more ambient, reverbs, echoes and so on.

But I can still hear the ambient and footsteps very well at lower volumes so I don't stand behind that.

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Yeah gun shots could be reduced a little so we could hear more ambient, reverbs, echoes and so on.

But I can still hear the ambient and footsteps very well at lower volumes so I don't stand behind that.

Gunshots etc are on the loud side gaming wise, .. balancing issues have been acknowledged by devs.

But I'm with jimmy, I use a standard headset nothing special. I hear footsteps and ambient.

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balancing issues have been acknowledged by devs.

Link?

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I'm confused. Wasn't everyone in this thread a few pages ago saying that many sounds in the game were far too similar in volume to gunshots? Now people are saying other sounds are too quiet compared to gunshots? Which do people want? Less range or more?

Edit: Megagoth, you're the one that made that video rallying for other sounds in the game to be reduced compared to gunshots. Now people are saying other sounds should be brought back up, and that gunshots are too loud?

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I'm confused. Wasn't everyone in this thread a few pages ago saying that many sounds in the game were far too similar in volume to gunshots? Now people are saying other sounds are too quiet compared to gunshots? Which do people want? Less range or more?

Edit: Megagoth, you're the one that made that video rallying for other sounds in the game to be reduced compared to gunshots. Now people are saying other sounds should be brought back up, and that gunshots are too loud?

More range without ridiculous volume. Real volumes with real sound distances are too impractical to replicate at home, i have neighbours and i do not want to play with hearing protection.

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Edit: Megagoth, you're the one that made that video rallying for other sounds in the game to be reduced compared to gunshots. Now people are saying other sounds should be brought back up, and that gunshots are too loud?

Yes, some people live on another planet apparently, where you can hear footsteps and bees while standing next to a tank with running engine.

It would be good to have a feature that dials general volume level up or down depending on situation. In reality, you are wandering around at night in the environment - you hear every little thing. Suddenly there is alot of noise for a while. Before you can hear the little details it takes a while. Just like your eyesight has to adjust to changes of brightness, it could be done the same with sound. -> Less loud sounds are dialed back immediately as soon as there are loud sounds. After a while, the silent ambient sounds are slowly dialed back up.

Edited by X3KJ

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More range without ridiculous volume.

Those two things directly contradict eachother. More range means quiet things are quieter and loud things are louder. Sounds like you want less range if gun shots are too loud compared to other things.

It would be good to have a feature that dials general volume level up or down depending on situation. In reality, you are wandering around at night in the environment - you hear every little thing. Suddenly there is alot of noise for a while. Before you can hear the little details it takes a while. Just like your eyesight has to adjust to changes of brightness, it could be done the same with sound. -> Less loud sounds are dialed back immediately as soon as there are loud sounds. After a while, the silent ambient sounds are slowly dialed back up.

The game definitely had this, was it removed? I know for a fact that I would hear the ambient sounds almost disappear after shooting a few rounds, and then slowly come back in.

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Those two things directly contradict eachother. More range means quiet things are quieter and loud things are louder. Sounds like you want less range if gun shots are too loud compared to other things.

Yeah let's not forget this is a game, and if a game simulated real life weapon loudness we would need ear protection to play. What we have is already too loud for a game.

What we really need is range in the individual sounds, not just between multiple sounds.

If you haven't watched it already, this video will explain what I mean (1:26 for the interesting part):

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The game definitely had this, was it removed? I know for a fact that I would hear the ambient sounds almost disappear after shooting a few rounds, and then slowly come back in.

Well i dont know, according to the complains it doesnt work apparently...?

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It was definitely much more prominent before. Or was it in Arma 2?

I think you can hear it if you stand next to a tank with the engine on and fire your weapon. The engine's volume lowers and comes back up in a second after your shot.

But you can still hear those damn crickets over a tank main gun! :mad: A DDT DLC, please BI!

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Those two things directly contradict eachother. More range means quiet things are quieter and loud things are louder. Sounds like you want less range if gun shots are too loud compared to other things.

What we need is a change in volume dropoff over distance, it may not be realistic, but considering that realism would literally result in physical damage to our bodies i think we can let that slip. It would probably become more realistic because right now no one plays with realistic volume levels, and the result is that gunshots cannot be heard over a long enough distance.

EDIT: Also, HDR for sound is the worst. It sounds horrible, and our brains do not process sound like that. Do not change the volume of things based on the volume of other things, that is not how it works in real life and our brain expects the same volume in such situations, so making it suddenly higher or lower just results in a terrible experience.

Edited by NeMeSiS

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Most of the audio is not yet from in-game recordings, but it gives an impression of how we want to push the soundscape further, especially in terms of ambient audio. The goal is to deeply immerse you in our "green hell"!

Great news!

EDIT: Ok, no seriously. The SDV has sounds of a surface boat. Needs a fix.

Edited by DarkSideSixOfficial

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