Sounds

[bn880 5]

I just wanted to suggest that engine sounds and bullet flying sounds have speed of sound delays added to them.

Additionally if sound dynamics could be a little better with various sound cards, not just Creative which seems to be the only soundcard brand that uses EAX in OFP properly. Without EAX at least, sounds do not go through proper changes with distance to ear etc... explosions at 0m sound the same at 5Km, something wrong there.

[bn880 5]

Same deal for the say command. Or perhaps a new command

object playSound "soundName"

which has speed of sound delay etc...

[Heatseeker 0]

... not just Creative which seems to be the only soundcard brand that uses EAX in OFP properly.  Without EAX at least, sounds do not go through proper changes with distance to ear etc... explosions at 0m sound the same at 5Km, something wrong there.  

Tell that to my crappy old SB live ... but i think we all agree that overall sound improvement is a definite must in OPF2, not only your sugestion but quality, realism and variation wise .

[Balschoiw 0]

There also should be a change of sound when entering buildings. Sounds from outside should be more "dull".

A sound engine improvement like in Thief 3 would be nice but hardly to embedd. It uses reflective materials wich reflect sound in a tin manner or almost mute sounds when doors are closed and such. For sure this won´t be easy to implement but it´s a suggestion to get OFP 2 even more close to reality.

[chammy 7]

Yeah I agree.I have pointed out some issues about that before. The sounds should change from 1.25 to half a mile, sounds tend to muffle a bit when fatrher away.A good example of that is BF 1942. Plus, for each weapon like the m16, since there are differnt types, each one sounds significantly different, just like the AK47 and AK74 and PK. They should also add reverb types, like stated in your other post that sound as no reverb in buildings, more echo reverb when shooting around close buildings, forest and hill side reverb out side.Hopefully they ad some reverb to the Heavy Machine guns. They need to add more ricorchet sounds too.But remmeber this game was made in 2001 so tech. should be more improved now to be able to add all these technical addons. What would be cool too is when anythgin of high explosive go off at close range , there should be teh concussion effect of the noise to the ears, a little dampening and ringing of the ears is good.But that might be asking too much.I know Ghost Recon has that but in XBox.

[Blink Dog 0]

My biggest gripe was with the sound in the origional ofp. About the only good thing about it was the realtime delay of hearing sounds off in the distance, otherwise everything else about it was bad.

I would recommend to BIS to either get a small in house sound crew or to subcontract to a company that does this sort of thing. Having the engine render sounds depending on the enviroment would be cool but mainly just get better samples. The origional M16 and grenade sounds were in my opinion the worst sounds ever in any game.

[TDogg 0]

Realistic sounds really add to the feeling of the game like you are actually in a firefight or somethin.

[Baphomet 0]

Quote[/b] ] just wanted to suggest that engine sounds and bullet flying sounds have speed of sound delays added to them.

Additionally if sound dynamics could be a little better with various sound cards, not just Creative which seems to be the only soundcard brand that uses EAX in OFP properly.  Without EAX at least, sounds do not go through proper changes with distance to ear etc... explosions at 0m sound the same at 5Km, something wrong there.  

I've said something akin to this a while ago. I think in general OFP really needs to take a cue from mainstream shooters like Halflife 2 that have opted to integrate more realistic sound engine based processing (or so it appears to me). Explosions produce a nice muted "thud" sound like they would at a distance, whilst making an appropriately ear assailing "bang" at closer ranges. Kind of reminds me of this: 40mm boom

There would be something seriously wrong with OFP 2 if it didn't have more realistic weapon sounds than a game like Halflife 2. In my opinion. Even listening to the rapid popping stacatto of combine soldiers spraying their MP7's at me from a distance just increases the immersiveness in ways I previously hadn't conceived.

Here's the kicker though. When you play the weapon sounds in windows media player or whatever, most sound pretty generic. It's that sound processing I'm assuming that Half-life 2 does to make them sound so much better.

A perfect example would be the shotgun. Normally it sounds pretty nondescript. Fire it in a close room and it seems like the sound takes on a markedly different timbre, it's more harsh sounding with a slight rattling echo depending on where you are.

However I don't encourage the reliance on third party hardware for this. Such as EAX simply because instead of taking a load off the cpu to process the dynamic sounds, it adds something like 10% to the cpu load.

Unacceptable in my opinion.

Quote[/b] ]Realistic sounds really add to the feeling of the game like you are actually in a firefight or somethin.

Moreso than graphics in my opinion. OFP 2's combat ambience, and environmental realism would be increased by many more orders of magnitude with a good sound engine than it would be with fifty unkajillion poly models for everything.

EDIT

Wow, my 666th post.  

[Goeth 0]

What i would like to suggest is that bis please don´t be cheap when it comes to sound editing, sounds are more important than some fancy texture work. If you´re running low on money then expel few texture and model artists and hire sound editors instead.

[bn880 5]

Yes sound work I believe is extremely important once you actually play the game, less so for sales however. Although friends talk. Sounds are great for better reviews.

Consider this for a minute:

if you put a high pitched engine sound on a racing game, automatically everyone playing the game thinks they are going much faster than if you use lower pitch, lower RPM etc. So sounds can change your perception entirely and fool you... Hollywood regulairly (always) adds engine revving and tire squealing sounds to cars that are actually going quite slow and are just being driven errradically by the stunt drivers... or even regular drivers, and everyone thinks they are going ultra fast. ;)

I also suggest to BIS to put in the time for very good sound dynamics/logic. Maybe even configurable attenuation formulas in configs? There is a lot more that could be done, that is for sure. For example weapons firing, you could make separate sounds for the weapon mechanisms, the bullet flying(already there), the barrel explosion, etc.

The reason is, with larger distance, you hear the explosion, but not the mechanism or the bullet whizz. Close range you get the full effects.

There are many sound changes due to different *terrain*, humidity, buildings etcetra. Those would be nice to have as well, if at all possible.

[Blink Dog 0]

If BIS is going to use sound clips one suggestion I would make is have your samples about 80% real and 20% hollywood.

What I mean is making a sound sample from the actual weapon in question and maybe adding bass or volume to the sound to pep it up a bit. Then maybe have the engine modify the sound a bit depending on indoor/outdoor conditions etc.

The thing to remember too is that since the game is pretty processor intence you can only do so much without having to make sacrifices elsewhere.

[Baphomet 0]

If BIS is going to use sound clips one suggestion I would make is have your samples about 80% real and 20% hollywood.

What I mean is making a sound sample from the actual weapon in question and maybe adding bass or volume to the sound to pep it up a bit. Then maybe have the engine modify the sound a bit depending on indoor/outdoor conditions etc.

The thing to remember too is that since the game is pretty processor intence you can only do so much without having to make sacrifices elsewhere.

You don't really -need- to pep up the sound of a gun, in reality even even a 9mm pistol if you're firing it indoors is bloody loud.

Got back from an indoor firing range this evening, and good god. Loud guns. It was odd though. I fired a .45 acp pistol and a beretta 9mm and they both sounded about the same. Just really loud like an ungodly loud pop. The desert eagle .50 that someone was firing four lanes over was so loud that I could feel this kind of vibration of the bass shaking my insides. Very distracting. It was even louder than the guy in the lane next to me firing a .308 rifle. If that's any indication of how loud that thing can be.

Still that's the thing though. With good sound processing you could have a gun sound as it should in both indoor and outdoor conditions, near or far. I really think OFP needs this.

I'm going to an outdoor range tomorrow, thankfully. I really don't like indoor ranges. I'll take the cold over deafening noise anyday.

[Blink Dog 0]

That was my complaint about the origional sounds for ofp, they were weak in my opinion. The M16 sound and the hand grenade sound were really off, the sounds do need to be louder for sure.

[.pablo. 0]

sorry to dig this up, but i really like the way bn880 explained the problem [with sound in ofp] in a post he made on ofpec:

Quote[/b] ]Hi Deadmeat and everyone,

thank you for the great review but.. I am very frustrated with the varying complaints we have gotten about the sound of the UA, why:

We have obtained as high fidelity sounds as we can for many effects and have tuned them to maximum volume without a distortion (not _all_ effects). We also have people in our team and in our beta test team who have heard similar artillery fire IRL.

However there are limiting factors in the way sounds are reproduced in OFP and really any game. You do not get the shock wave associated with the explosions. Many other effects of much weaker weapons are already maximized (most), thus leaving little room for artillery or even nuclear weapons to actually be louder at the same distance.

And there is the problem of distance attenuation. Distance attenuation should be represented by a logarithmic factor drop in sound volume and almost linear drop rate of frequency with distance, thus also introducing bass into any sound effect. Yet this does not seem to be calculated as well as one would like. If you want to make your sound in OFP be heard very loud at 100m, it will sound exactly the same across the island only a little quieter. EAX aids in this with some Creative cards a little bit.

Why would I mention this attenuation, well because at a very close range weapons sounds IRL don't have much bass, even a shell exploding at your feet will be a terrible mostly high pitch noise with a serious concussion and shearing. At 20-50 meters you can imagine about the same, it is only at a large distance where you receive the sound indirectly where you start hearing heavy bass from an explosion. (and still the shockwave)

So... if we add great bass to the sound effects from the start, it will not be realistic at all when you are looking straight at the artillery peices or explosions, it may be fun and impressive, but not realistic. And there is no real way to increase volume other than losing realistic sound properties by adding other unrealistic frequencies to the effects.

Kind Regards

bn880

http://www.ofpec.com/addons/addon_detail.php?ID=440

i think that is a huge problem that seriously needs to be fixed; i'll give two examples of why:

i was just today playing a mission where i was several km from a battle, but the clarity and high-frequency of the sounds of the gunshots that reached me made it seem as though the fighting were going on only 200-300m away...i also remember playing cti with a guy whose strategy to find the enemy mhq was just to go to a quiet place in the middle of the map and turn his volume all the way up, to the point where he could here the mhq across the island; that just isn't realistic. even if a person could "turn up" his hearing in real-life, the sound of a tank would be clouded by background noise at such long ranges; this needs to be simulated in ofp!

the solution to these problems is exactly what bn880 posted: "Distance attenuation should be represented by a logarithmic factor drop in sound volume and almost linear drop rate of frequency with distance, thus also introducing bass into any sound effect."

here's some more reading for those who are interested:

An Introduction to Sound Basics

Psychophysics of Human Localization

[Balschoiw 0]

Additionally low frequencies that come for example from moving tanks far away are hard to spot as low frequency sounds don´t loose much of their power as the wavelength is pretty long. So the sound "grumbles" in the back and it´s very hard to say where it comes from. Maybe this could be implemented aswell. So you know there is something moving around but you can´t determine the direction that precise unless you move closer and higher frequencies are added to the sound.

I also wondered about jet sounds. I´ll take the Tornado for example as I live in a low flight training zone of them.

You hear them when they are very close only. They scream over your head with no prior sound sign of their presence. I know this is really very hard to implement but it would certainly rock to have that real life sonic effect ingame. Basically the plane emitts it´s sound backwards. Maybe that can help.

I would love to see people ingame who jump into trenches because a fighter jet really howles over their heads.

Not to forget the supersonic boom

Maybe an emitter/direction/distance based sound system would be the solution to all that, although I don´t know if that is possible. A calculated, emitted sound could be controlled when it comes to indoor scenarios aswell as the path the sound takes could be checked and recalculated. I don´t know how much CPU power such takes but I think it should be possible as it works with other games aswell.

[gandalf the white 0]

A sonicboom is already possible in OFP, I've seen it with some F114 I believe. However, the effect was only simulated for the pilot.

Thief 3 had a fantastic soundengine, Lomac can do what Balschoiw suggested, but both games have one thing in common: less AI...

[guyguy1 0]

I hope that BI makes strives to improve the sound effects in every category. The sound effects in OFP were questionable in regards to realism, so I sure hope BI is working hard to fix and improve the sound effects for both ArmA and Game2. Half-Life 2 sounds were pretty fair, but theyre not perfect (Just don't imitate that game's physics; theyre horrendous). IMO i think that Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon have the most accurate sound effects in the Gunfire/Explosions category to date.(They did a great job on the m-16, grenade explosions, sniper rifles, and AK rifle series). I'd like to see some better weather sound effects, and especially improved gunfire and penetration sounds (Bullets nicking off a tank, bullets hitting something/someone etc.)