Plans for a new/updated SOUND ENGINE in ARMA3??

[NeuroFunker 11]

arma 3 audio engine IS updated, it lacks on certain features, like occlusion, reverbearion/echoing etc. It was not BIS highest priority to spend whole time on adding tons of feature to it. I just hope, BI Devs will find the time now, to expand the sound engine, with most requested filters like reverb and occlusion. I've been playing arma 2 with jsrs and harcp sound mods, and while arma 3 samples, are on good quality now, i miss echoing like in HARCP, where shooting a gun in the woods or field, caused echo split across the hills, which sounded amazing, and did bring lots of immersion.

[.kju 3244]

first they should fix all the bugs present in the sound engine and sound configuration

[almanzo 144]

I am not joking here at all, hire LordJarhead for the sound engine. I am pretty sure he'll be interested, and the fact that he was able to make J.S.R.S as it is in ARMA II into the best sound replication I have ever experienced in any game ever, talks massive amounts of his capabilities.

People unfamiliar with J.S.R.S should check it out on youtube, or even better, try it out for themselves in ARMA II.

[zeep 3]

I am not joking here at all, hire LordJarhead for the sound engine. I am pretty sure he'll be interested, and the fact that he was able to make J.S.R.S as it is in ARMA II into the best sound replication I have ever experienced in any game ever, talks massive amounts of his capabilities.

People unfamiliar with J.S.R.S should check it out on youtube, or even better, try it out for themselves in ARMA II.

I'm sure everybody knows about JSRS and its already mentioned in this thread.

This thread is/was about the sound engine, not recorded sound data.

@Warden, can you shed some light on the subject please?

[bad benson 1733]

This thread is/was about the sound engine, not recorded sound data.

JSRS has scripted sound reverb and distance effects (not really effects but different samples for different distances i think) and i'm pretty sure someone other than LordJarhead wrote the code (no offense just clarifying). i think that is what he meant. not the samples themself.

i think just the fact that sqf non engine based reverb is possible with reasonable performance shows how possible it is in general. it's all there to do it on the engine level. lineintersects for position validation, boundingbox for size of building and real time sound filtering used for when you are underwater. like many other things this just didn't happen/wasn't done. too bad. this engine could be a real top dog with features like that.

btw zeep. what exactly do you have in mind for an update? are you talking about occlusion and reverb too? i mean eliminating existing bugs is not really an update of the engine's capabilities.

[Kerc Kasha 102]

the 5.1 issues is completely unacceptable. The entire center channel is 'dropped' so when you're looking in the direction of someone firing at you, you can't even hear the gun shot or it's horribly muted.

How this hasn't been fixed since alpha is beyond me, especially seeing as 5.1 worked fine in Arma 2.

[Tonci87 163]

the 5.1 issues is completely unacceptable. The entire center channel is 'dropped' so when you're looking in the direction of someone firing at you, you can't even hear the gun shot or it's horribly muted.

How this hasn't been fixed since alpha is beyond me, especially seeing as 5.1 worked fine in Arma 2.

Really sad that this still hasn´t been fixed.

[fragmachine 12]

But really, what happened to the obscurable sounds? It sounded good, authentic but not enought CODish for some newcomer players that been whining about it on FT?

[Zorg_DK 10]

I also hope BI will give us proper reverb of sounds based on location (firing inside buildings sounds different that in a field, which sounds different than in a forest etc.). Come on BI, you can do it. :)

[zeep 3]

As far as effects go, AFAIK the only effect they use is a limiter on the master (mixdown).

Which is relatively basic, otherwise several loud sounds playing together can cause audio clipping (cracks).

I wish the devs spoke out more on this all. The Audio tweaking thread in dev also doesn't give out much info on plans BIS has..

Ondřej Matějka i understand is head Audio department @ BIS. Hopefully he will read everything and will be addressing it soon.

Arma3, in this day and age these audio shortcomings are very below average.

[AsRock+SD 0]

Yeah their is audio issue's with this game sadly, how ever i got positional audio to work with arma 2/3 by using my AMD HDMI output to my A/V setup which allows me to tell if the tank or helli is behind or in front of me..

A friend all so got it to work with his card and if people are interested in getting positional audio i could ask him what sound card he's using..

Their is a realtek HD hack that allows this with most games but fails to work with Arma 3 sadly.

[zeep 3]

Your soundcard is not the issue, or the solution. The arma3 audio engine has limitations of processing. Either by default or by lack of investment/support from the developer.

Basically the output is mixed 2D, and hardly perfect. There is no account for sounds heard through occlusion, different penetration of sound through various materials. Such as mountains, forests, cities, houses, tunnels, over water, your own ears etc, all calculated and processed in realtime.

Only underwater seems to be present in-game. When done right, the game would sound perfectly 3D and vibrant real of plain Stereo Speaker setup.

Sadly, as it is now it doesn't even output 2D flawless, 4.1/ 5.1 setups suffer from even more bugs.

Back to hardware. Your soundcard can only take the audio (information) output from the game and roll with that. If the game doesn't take all those variables into account that alter sounds, and sends it out "broken", then your audio card can only do stuff like simple placement and add its own on-board effects. That may sound nice but it's not an honest representation of what it should *really* sound like in-game.

I wish BIS would hire me for mixing and engineering.

Battlefield is not my game of choice but i own BF:BC2 on the pc (bought it mainly for the amazing sound) and running around in that world is awesome. Indoor, outdoor. The mixdown is just great.

[progamer 14]

But really, what happened to the obscurable sounds? It sounded good, authentic but not enought CODish for some newcomer players that been whining about it on FT?

Arma 2's sounds were a lot better.

[marcai 1]

I thought I had the issues you guys were on about, but fixed it with some Realtec settings wizardry. What is it, exactly, that's not working? I use my Roccat Kave headphones in 5.1 surround and don't seem to have any issues (apart from the one I caused, it seems!)

Edit 2: Or not.. again. Looking directly at the NPCs who are talking to me leaves me unable to hear what they're saying. I'm having to tilt my head like an old man to hear what they're telling me.

Edited November 3, 2013 by Marcai

[progamer 14]

Arma 2's sounds were a lot better.

Arma 3's weapon sounds are missing that snap like sound when firing. No idea why but it could be because Arma 3 is missing parts of the Arma 2 sound engine.

[tpM 478]

No, it's because the soundfiles were designed that way.

[progamer 14]

No, it's because the soundfiles were designed that way.

It looks more like a missing aspect of the sound engine from arma 2.

[zeep 3]

Devs i still hope to see you actually mention that you are improving the sound engine at some point.

Edited January 24, 2014 by zeep

[roshnak 41]

It looks more like a missing aspect of the sound engine from arma 2.

No it doesn't. You know, if you wanted to research something before you posted, you could probably just open up the .pbos from both games and listen to the sound files outside of the game. You would probably notice that they sound the same inside the game as outside of it.

There are several features of previous games' sound engines that are not in Arma 3, but nothing has ever made the sounds more or less "snappy."

Edit: Ugh, this thread is like 3 months old. But seriously, why remove features from the sound engine?

[tremanarch 6]

dont waste time on x.1 pls. stereo is the best quality and mixing wise, and will ever be most realistic, arma gamers are no clowns that need big numbers to get attention.

humans have two ears - we need two speakers. everything else is degradation in quality.

the brain invented techniques to know where sounds are with having only two ears.. why unlearn untrain that knowledge with silly 7.1 crap?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-related_transfer_function

and compared to jsrs 2.0 - bf3/4 sounds boring...

[zeep 3]

dont waste time on x.1 pls. stereo is the best quality and mixing wise, and will ever be most realistic, arma gamers are no clowns that need big numbers to get attention.

humans have two ears - we need two speakers. everything else is degradation in quality.

the brain invented techniques to know where sounds are with having only two ears.. why unlearn untrain that knowledge with silly 7.1 crap?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-related_transfer_function

and compared to jsrs 2.0 - bf3/4 sounds boring...

Can't make out if you're being sarcastic in favor for the current sound engine or not.

I.e. HRTF simulated with 3D audio for stereo speakers. For that to function you need an audio engine capable of doing that (3D audio). Calculations / filtering to simulate ear/skull thickness etc. So you can i.e. hear when something is behind you with a simple 2 monitor stereo setup. Arma3's engine doesn't even do that.

Anyway, i have little hope that this will ever happen.

And JSRS are SOUND SAMPLES. With effects already applied to them. They are scripted to play. People don't get the difference between sounds and sound engine capabilities around here. Probably one of the reasons BIS gets away with it, or simply can't be bothered to improve the ENGINE.

Onto the next poster mentioning JSRS who doesn't understand the difference..

Edited January 24, 2014 by zeep

[dnk 13]

Yes, it needs drastic improvement. Drastic.

[roshnak 41]

It's definitely one of the weakest points of the game. The thing I don't get is that OFP apparently had a doppler simulation (I don't actually remember noticing this), Arma had sound occlusion, and not only does Arma 3 not have either of those things, but it doesn't really have anything better, either.

Edited January 25, 2014 by roshnak

[dnk 13]

Hey, it plays sounds. They might not sound exactly where they are angularly, and it's anyone's guess how far they are, but they play sounds. Sometimes multiple sounds at one time. It's amazing. Laurels, time for a rest.

[Bouben 3]

What bothers me a lot is that the basic leveling of the mixdown is not done right.

Some sounds are wrongly quiet and some wrongly loud. Only if you are capable to get your basics right (the levels) you can then apply additional processing and FXs - make things more complicated. What bothers me even more is that there does not seem to be a problem with untreated dynamics (which can be really tricky) so it really seems as if leveling was just wrong (which is, mostly, quite a trivial thing to do, after you get your EQ and compression right).

It seems to me as if a BIS' audio engineer was satisfied how it sounds in his own (hopefully fully treated) studio but have not check it on different setups in different environments.

Just my two cents.