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Laxemann's "Enhanced Soundscape" (L_ES) - Gun reverb and echo based on terrain

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ES.png

LAxemann proudly presents...

LAxemann's Enhanced Soundscape (L_ES)

What's the idea behind it?

While working on the fun soundmod of Odium and myself I got to the point where I had to ask myself

"It's a fun soundmod but the sounds should still feature everything a "real gun" has, meaning e.g. separate reverb sounds and probably even a sound that gives the impression of the "gun sound" being reflected from

somewhere in the distance... so how do I achieve that?"... and the idea was born.

In reality, a lot of what many people tend to call "the" gun sound is defined by the shooter's surroundings. Shooting down a valley sound completely different than standing in a small indoor shooting cabin.

So I always found it quite unimmersive that in games, when shooting a gun, the reverb and stuff is included in the actual "firing" sound and not actually coming from the valley you're shooting into.

What does the Enhanced Soundscape do?

Quite simple, yet so complicated. ES currently has four main features:

• ES plays reverb sounds in the firing direction based on terrain (Distance to the next mountain etc.)

• When shooting in the direction of a mountain/raised terrain in general there is a chance that the gun sound gets reflected back to the shooter

• When firing in an urban area, the gun sounds get reflected from nearby buildings

• When firing in a forest, the gun sounds get reflected from the trees around you, resulting in a dense reverb

All this is based on (simple) speed of sound calculations, meaning e.g. that it will take longer for you to hear the gun's echo (popp) when shooting in the direction of a very far away mountain.

Feature overview:

• Play reverb based on terrain (No reverb e.g. when directly (from a close distance) shooting against a mountain/hill)

• Play echo "popp" sounds if there's terrain that can reflect the gun sound in the shooting direction

• Reflect the gunsounds from nearby buildings when being in urban areas (So fighting in a city feels completely different than fighting in the open!)

• Dende "volumetric" reverb when shooting inside a forest

• ES doesn't change any actual gunsounds, it just ADDS more elements and can therefore be used with any "real" soundmod such as JSRS, SoS...

• No effects when having a silencer or being inside a building (a bit hollywood-like but since most other sound related mods go the same way...)

• Completely local, no need to run it on the server, no network traffic

• Userconfig in which you can define the minimum fps at which ES calculations kick in (Default: 15fps)

What's WIP/ planned for the future?

• Add new soundsets for more weapons

• Polish the existing sounds

• More features, maybe?

• Testing

• Testing

• Testing

What can you show us?

For more videos check out the YouTube channel.

Come on, come on - download?

YES!

Here is a first alpha version:

DOWNLOAD (0.80)

or

news_download_a3_3.png

LAxemann's Enhanced Soundscape (L_ES) v0.80

As always, keep in mind that this is a very early alpha release.

I'd therefore like you to give me as much feedback as possible!

Otherwise: Enjoy! :)

Requirements

CBA A3

Changelog

0.80 - Complete overhaul

• New userconfig

• New key

• Pretty much everything was overhauled at some point

• New sounds

• New sound dynamics

• Improved performance

• Removed JSRS compatibility (JSRS already uses a lite version of ES and will be updated when the time has come)

• Fixed the launcher errors

0.46 - JSRS3 Compatibility (Urban and forest sounds will automatically stop since JSRS3 uses an intern version of L_ES)

0.45 - Fixed: The urban script no longer checks for the player but the actual shooter

0.44 - Slight performance improvment thanks to Fett_Li

0.43 - Internal version

Minor urban script tweaks

0.42 - Internal version

Reworked urban soundsets for HMGs, sniper rifles and cannons

0.41

Performance improvement thanks to Ruthberg (again! :))

Changed: Standard urban soundset (should sound more "intense" now)

Removed obsolete scripts

0.40

Added: First version of the forest feature (Thanks to killzone_kid for the tip!)

Optimized scripts, resulting in faster and better execution of the forest and urban scripts

Added: compatibility with JSRS 2.2 which doesn't take speed of sound into account up to 130m

Changed: Pistol reverb sounds

Changed: Zafir reverb sounds

Changed: M2 reverb sounds

Changed: Some minor volume tweaks

0.31 - Improved the urban scripts

0.30 - ES can now be disabled via userconfig

Huge performance increase thanks to Ruthberg, eliminated memory leak

New Soundset: Trg21

Reworked: Soundsets for launchers, GMG and MX

Tweaked some volumes

0.20 - Own key, script and performance improvements, no reverb for "put" classes (such as satchels)

0.15 - New soundsets: Mk20, Katiba, Mk200, Rahim - New urban soundset for heavy machineguns

0.12 - New soundsets: Zafir & 155mm howitzer, significant performance improvements

0.11 - Removed obsolete scripts (no error messages anymore)

0.1 - First public alpha release

Credits:

Gruppe W for being the best tactical community for over two years now!

Bohemia Interactive for ArmA and their work in general

[W] Fett_Li for helping me understanding stuff

Kylania for the suppressor check

[W] Janus for the help with the suppressor check ;P

Ruthberg for some scripting tips and working on parts of the code

twirly for the nice moving object example

tpM for some reverb sounds

wartheatre for some very nice sounds

killzone_kid for helping me with the forest feature

Bad Benson for some help with a retarded Array question :D

Foxhound and the others that take care of informing the community

All the people out there that keep on motivating me!

Edited by LAxemann
  • Like 3

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adds a lot more atmosphere to the game already! it really gives that feeling of depth to the landscape, and hopefully any battles too, that vanilla Arma 3 just fell short of, I'll definitely be downloading this!

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Very nice work so far. Looking forward to seeing where you take this.

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How is compatibility with other sound mods going to be? Could we use this togheter with for example JSRS?

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Thanks for the feedback guys, just finished the autocannon (35mm) stuff :)

How is compatibility with other sound mods going to be? Could we use this togheter with for example JSRS?

Yup! The mod only "adds" new elements so it should be compatible with any sound mod out there, however I'm trying to achieve a volume level that'll sound good with the vanilla sounds aswell as with the JSRS ones.

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If this can be paired with the upcoming ACSE, the magnitude of eargasms' gonna be dangerously high :angel:

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If this can be paired with the upcoming ACSE, the magnitude of eargasms' gonna be dangerously high :angel:

Good thing it can. ;)

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ACSE, Real Weather... Now this... Dude, i think at some point were going to be so caught up in Sound Emerssion, that we will refuse to play the game without these. Dude, i'm in love with this mod already, and you only showed us a the basics with one gun and one vehicle weapon. Keep it up. This is what Vanilla sound Engine is lacking. Outstanding work you have here. Also, one quick question... If a jet flies by, could you make an enviornmental thing for that? The sounds of the engine refracting? Or is it just a weapon thing?

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ACSE, Real Weather... Now this... Dude, i think at some point were going to be so caught up in Sound Emerssion, that we will refuse to play the game without these. Dude, i'm in love with this mod already, and you only showed us a the basics with one gun and one vehicle weapon. Keep it up. This is what Vanilla sound Engine is lacking. Outstanding work you have here. Also, one quick question... If a jet flies by, could you make an enviornmental thing for that? The sounds of the engine refracting? Or is it just a weapon thing?

I can and will look into that lateron (I even thought about optional flyby scripts), but adding different soundsets for the different weapons is my highest priority so far. And after adding the sounds for "open fields" I'll start working on my "urban surroundings" features. :)

Speaking about soundsets... here's the autocannon!

Edit: Whoops, wrong quality settings. Re-uploading!

Edit2: Check my post below or the first page. :)

Edited by LAxemann

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How much work is it to add a sound reverb etc to weapons LAxemann ?

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How much work is it to add a sound reverb etc to weapons LAxemann ?

The hardest part is it to gather useful sounds (I get mine from YouTube Videos and edit them afterwards... compression, EQing, fading, stuff like that.)

After that all you gotta do ist to define the sounds and add 4 entries to the weapon's config (meaning modders can add own soundsets to their weapons!) :)

(The script gathers a prefix that is defined by me or the modder in the config, e.g. "120mm", and then adds this prefix to a string so that it looks like "120mm_reverb_1". Easy but effective system!

Here is the promised autocannon video, with JSRS:

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Sounds cool, but should'nt be a bit greater delay between the shot and the echo? You have that hill around 300-400 meters from the APC, so the sound of the discharge would need a roughly a second to get there, and then another second to get back.

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The hardest part is it to gather useful sounds (I get mine from YouTube Videos and edit them afterwards... compression, EQing, fading, stuff like that.)

After that all you gotta do ist to define the sounds and add 4 entries to the weapon's config (meaning modders can add own soundsets to their weapons!) :)

(The script gathers a prefix that is defined by me or the modder in the config, e.g. "120mm", and then adds this prefix to a string so that it looks like "120mm_reverb_1". Easy but effective system!

Here is the promised autocannon video, with JSRS:

Sounds so AMAZING!!!!!

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Sounds cool, but should'nt be a bit greater delay between the shot and the echo? You have that hill around 300-400 meters from the APC, so the sound of the discharge would need a roughly a second to get there, and then another second to get back.

That's the weak spot, I could simulate all that but it would eat performance like crazy. So at least currently we have the reverb sound played in the terrain in front of the unit (to give a sense of "depth") if appropriate, only the echo or "popp" is actually reflected. :)

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You said it isnt adding things, so its like a filter type of sound thingy or somthing :confused:

Does this remove the terrible overbearing as f*ck reverb on the AAF mk15 rifle ( the f2000) and the MX that also has like reverb that is oh god why my ears?

Thanks

-MikeTim

Lol I wrote this in like .4 seconds it probably has so many spelling errors

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Great work.

But i fear performance issues with this. I can almost smell them. Performances in multiplayer are already so damn poor, i don't want to take any risks.

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You said it isnt adding things, so its like a filter type of sound thingy or somthing :confused:

Does this remove the terrible overbearing as f*ck reverb on the AAF mk15 rifle ( the f2000) and the MX that also has like reverb that is oh god why my ears?

Thanks

-MikeTim

Lol I wrote this in like .4 seconds it probably has so many spelling errors

Huh, where did I write that? If yes, I said nonsense, it adds stuff, but doesn't change the "normal" stuff... if that makes sense.

Great work.

But i fear performance issues with this. I can almost smell them. Performances in multiplayer are already so damn poor, i don't want to take any risks.

Oh, I forgot to mention... you can define the maximum amount of shots that are simulated simultaniously in the userconfig, so you can always just lower them in case your PC is having a hard time. :)

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Eargasm from that last video :D

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Hey peeps,

small update:

In earlier versions the gun reverb was just "spawned" a few hundred meters in front of the shooter. tpM pointed out that he was thinking that the terrain reverb sound was the ectual "clearly audible" reflected echo and that made me think...

Indeed, it sounded a bit static with the earlier method (having the terrain reverb spawned playing at a predefined position).

So I sat down and worked a bit more on the actual code and voila, I found a solution which is surprisingly performant and way more dynamic. And it fixes an issue with the previous method. :D

The terrain reverbs are now actually "wandering" from the shooter's position in the direction he's shooting, so it really sounds as if the sound is "unfolding" in front of the shooter! :)

Since I'm a fan of videos and media myself, here is a qucik video that demonstrates how it sounds at the moment (still needs a bit of improvement):

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