Sound engine - things in need of attention

Its neat that we got some updates in the soundengine, but it still suffers from the old ArmA1 problems plus newly introduced ones.

Sounds disapering when too much happening (too few voices?). Like shooting a bunch of FFAR's removes the engine sound and such. I thaught this was fixed in ARMA2 when i saw that we got a new sound engine but its the same. Me and friends with new super sound cards get the same effect.

Occluding not on all sounds is also a problem. Small arms fire when shot behind a building is only lowered in volume, still clear sharp sound and not occluded wich leads you to think the shooter is far away instead of around the corner. This is serious in a combat sim where determening the direction and distance is an important factor. Also noticing that helicopters behind vegetation is the same. I was 2 meters away from a landed yet running helicopter and i had a bush between me and the heli. The sound went down in volume a lot and still clear making it sound like the helicopter is far away with nothing in between. In this situation i think its ok to not occlude it since it was so close, but then the volume shouldnt go down so much making it sound like its 50 meters away. Some occlusion on it only and it would be perfect.

The last thing i noticed is some explosions like artillery shot ones on impact will "stay" on the ear they are first played on. If you look somewhere and an explosion goes off to your right and you turn your head to look for it - it will continue its sound on that ear until played out. No matter how you turn your head it sounds only on that ear that the sound started on. Maybe its my card (AUDIGY2) but i hear more people say this.

So my suggestion is that these things get looked into cause they are important in a super game like this. im a sound-a-holic and it didnt take me long to discover these things. And a combat sim where SA is so important to stay sharp this just makes it both uneccesarily hard and unrealistic. I know you guys have a lot on your plate wich is important like performance and other things, but i dearly hope youll take this seriously and look into it cause its a big thing to me and i think many others. You know i love this game and i just want it to be kickass.

Regards

Alex

No one thinks this is important? Wow...

If this doesnt get attention you will get killed often not knowing why and where the shot came from. Ive talked to many now and they all say they hear shots one direction and after looking its not from there at all but another direction.

No occlusion when sounds are played behind buildings and only lowered volume lets you think the sound is not behind an object but far away wich confuses you a lot.

I guess the average joe doesnt notice this. It IS a big problem though in a combat sim-ish game. The "sim" part gets lower with these problems.

Alex

I think it's important. For me the sounds of a game is where most of the immersion comes from, and obviously then immersion is killed if the sounds are poor or confusing.

While for the most part I have not had an issue determining where shots came from it's not perfect and seems to be inconsistent. I've also had the engine sound disapear when using FFAR but only the once. It happened once, I fired them again and it didn't happen again.

There are also other issues like shots and explosions that happen in the distance have their own sound and I was impressed when I first heard it, but occasionally the normal close sound slips inplace of the distant sound.

There is also hearing environmental sounds when in a chopper, like birds and vehicles. The bird sounds may have been fixed now I can't remember. Now I'm no expert, I've been in an attack helicopter or helicopter for that matter, I would just think you would be able to hear bugger all except for the rumble of an explosion.

Overall I think the sounds are great and a massive improvement over it's predecessors, but there are a few small issues that I think will get sorted pretty soon.

These have been since years mate. Like sounds disapearing. Really hope it gets fixed but...

And if you make tests. Make a unit fire a rifle behind a house real close to you. Its not occluded "muffled" as in ArmA1 where you understand "hey theres someone behind the building". But here its just lower in volume and still crisp so it makes you think the shooter is instead in full view but far away. Very confusing and confirmed by others.

Occlusion was part of all sounds in ArmA1 when sounds were played behind objects/ground so you knew that that sound didnt have clear view to yourself. Now you go hide even though the shooter is behind a building firing at someone else.

So yeah, well see what happens. As it is now it breaks the "SIM" seal hard for me. Sounds are mighty important. Not just for immersion but for pinpointing whats going on around you of what you cant see. This is true in real life combat - it was true in ArmA1 and its gone in ARMA2.

Alex

Alex, MSN now :)

I have occlussion :0

Will do. I was never even aware of that feature in Arma. I'm not saying it wasn't there, i just never noticed it. Maybe I never gave the sounds in arma 1 enough credit. It's like in movies, if the sound department has done its job properly then you shouldn't even really notice them.

I do remember the sound disapearing from Arma though, really annoying. So far I find the sounds overall in Arma 2 far more immersive than in Arma, if not a little inconsistant.

There's been one problem ever since OFP that I find annoying that it's not been fixed:

The cheap way vehicle sounds work. If it accelerates, the pitch raises a lot. It might sound all right on motor vehicles but it sounds ridiculous on the BICYCLE and while RUNNING.

No no the vehicle sounds are new in the way that they use several sounds when accelerating. Its just not perfectly made in ARMA2. This will change soon with mods. No problem.

Pitch was problem before when vehicles used only 1 sound for the engine. Now they use many.

Interesting. I've done some testing of two of the issues you mentioned. The first one I tested was shots fired behind buildings. I checked the volume of a shot behind no buildings, one building, two buildings and then a whole village and the sound volume seemed fine for each. No change in the sound itself, but the volume didn't drop to make me think it was further away than it was and the direction was easy to determine.

I also checked the chopper volume when behind bushes and trees at very close proximity and there was no change at all. Maybe these issues have been fixed in the latest patch. I assume yours is upto date.

Some of the ambient sounds on the map always sound like they're right in your ear, nomatter your situation.

I had to say something about it when I heard the "tweeting bird" in my left ear, loud as can be, as I rode the doorgun on the Huey.

Of course it is important!

It's important for all that have their ears working properly.

Yes the sounds need to be fixed because in several situations they don't work as they should to sound naturally .

Some of the ambient sounds on the map always sound like they're right in your ear, nomatter your situation.

I had to say something about it when I heard the "tweeting bird" in my left ear, loud as can be, as I rode the doorgun on the Huey.

Yeah I think there are few sounds from units that sound like their right next to you, I think a few groans from wounded soldiers.

That bird is really annoying, I think it's just the one sound though, it's really high pitched and it just cuts through any other sound.

That bird is really annoying, I think it's just the one sound though, it's really high pitched and it just cuts through any other sound.

oh that bird we can ear inside a moving helicopter? Yeah this issue should be fixed as well for the good sake or realistic immersion. :rolleyes:

Interesting. I've done some testing of two of the issues you mentioned. The first one I tested was shots fired behind buildings. I checked the volume of a shot behind no buildings, one building, two buildings and then a whole village and the sound volume seemed fine for each. No change in the sound itself, but the volume didn't drop to make me think it was further away than it was and the direction was easy to determine.

I also checked the chopper volume when behind bushes and trees at very close proximity and there was no change at all. Maybe these issues have been fixed in the latest patch. I assume yours is upto date.

You say no lower volume, but were they occluded? If they are not occluded its still wrong if they are played behind something compared to where you stand.

No sound occlusion. At the same distance the sound is exactly the same whether there is a building between the shooter and myself or not. So yeah that is an issue, although I don't know what a shot fired behind a building should sound like.

ok...

update. ive got all the updates....and the SOUND is messed up.

at random, the game volume, just DROPS to ZERO!-JUST the game volume(and system volume)

ill have to alt-tab Out to manually adjust it back to 100%, sometimes it works, sometimes it drops back to ZERO!

Also, ill be in a snow storm map, all i can hear is the dam wind blowing at 200mph with the volume cranked up! Same goes for shorelines, if i get close enough, thats all i hear.

Has ANYONE found a fix for this?

my specs:

Administrator: yes (unlocked and active)

win7 ent. x86 (q6600)

sound: onboard, with external ports for mic/sound in FRONT

4gig of ram

ati 4870 (1gb)

Defense system: off (all)

TeamSpeak: v3 RC2

ACRE: v1.3.2

there are other addons as well.

tricks ive done so far:

-made ts3 use ONE core

-adjusted the profile settings for volume/speech fade from default 5, to 20

-windows volume mixer option for when receiving a call,mute sounds..etc- its "Do nothing"

saved post from other forum i started: click here

NosTraDomus [uO]

The speed of sound doesn't even work for single gunshots yet.

I have obstruction/occlusion working for everything except trigger sounds (CfgSFX) and species (insects etc). Afaik occlusion only deals with volume, far explosions are something else.

Static explosion sounds was fixed a good while back. Is this bug back all of a sudden?

My own personal gripes and wishes on the sound engine:

1) Documentation! Need I really explain this?

2) Fix the two bugs on scripted trigger sounds: (1) setSoundEffect when setting slot 4 in the string array requires a dummy sound to be assign to slot 1 in order to not create an error dialog. And (2) fix the respawn while affected by scripted triggersound - I've checked - the trigger is physically there (I can move myself to its position) but it no longer play the sound (only if sound is playing near where I get killed and/or respawn).

3) Stereo soundscape for pretty much everything except radio. Weapons, vehicles, ambient sounds (rain, wind etc). They can gradually downmix to mono as you get away from the source, and slight EQ'ing together with some (not the full 100/0 we have today) volume change due to head orientation. If a vehicle is running 50 meters to my left, I can still hear it with my right ear. Use 25-40% together with slight reduction in treble to simulate far ear.

4) More "soundsource" objects. Since they are so few I never bothered with them. Maybe they work better than triggers?

5) Define names for absolutely everything you can place with a trigger. If not defined, then the classname should show up in the names place. Ok so the name won't be localized this way, but at least the classname might be able to tell us something rather than guess among a bunch of blank entries.

6) Make trigger based sounds, island object sounds (triggers/soundobject?), and species sounds be occluded/obstructed like everything else. Being in a really loud chopper and hearing oil pumps or insects really get to me :)

7) More island object sounds. We used to have ECS for these sorts of things back in Arma1, but this mod was never remade for Arma2. Now probably only me cares about it to make something similar, but it's kept in personal missions only.

8) Vehicle rain sounds rather than only the obstructed outside rain sound. Maybe the sound could have inverse obstruction? Sound increase as you get closer to the vehicle, and really kicks off when inside? I've put things like this in Domino (my Domination edit), and sitting there listening to rain is awesome :) Note that I'm using two different sets of sounds (hard and soft vehicles) with 4 sounds each (low, medium, high, pouring) for varying intensities of rain. Bah, I'll just post the script instead (for those who cares):

//Needed function that does same as simple expression interpolate
XfInterpolate = {
private ["_in","_xfrom","_xto","_resfrom","_resto","_out"];
_in = _this select 0;
_xfrom = _this select 1;
_xto = _this select 2;
_resfrom = _this select 3;
_resto = _this select 4;
_out = (1-((_in-_xfrom)*(1/(_xfrom-_xto))+1) min 1 max 0) * (_resto-_resfrom) + _resfrom;
_out
};

//Create the sound triggers; ts = trigger soft, th = trigger hard, 4 variations of each, see description.ext.
private ["_ts1","_ts2","_ts3","_ts4","_th1","_th2","_th3","_th4"];
for "_i" from 1 to 4 do {
call compile format ["
	_ts%1 = createTrigger['EmptyDetector', [0,0,0]];
	_ts%1 setTriggerArea [0, 0, 0, false];
	_ts%1 setTriggerActivation ['NONE', 'PRESENT', true];
	_ts%1 setTriggerStatements ['true', '', ''];
	_ts%1 setSoundEffect ['NoSound', '', '', 'rain_soft_%1'];
	", _i];
sleep 0.012;
};
for "_i" from 1 to 4 do {
call compile format ["
	_th%1 = createTrigger['EmptyDetector', [0,0,0]];
	_th%1 setTriggerArea [0, 0, 0, false];
	_th%1 setTriggerActivation ['NONE', 'PRESENT', true];
	_th%1 setTriggerStatements ['true', '', ''];
	_th%1 setSoundEffect ['NoSound', '', '', 'rain_hard_%1'];
	", _i];
sleep 0.012;
};
//Spawn loop that continuously moves the triggers up and down, simulating volume:
[_ts1,_ts2,_ts3,_ts4,_th1,_th2,_th3,_th4] spawn {
_ts1 = _this select 0; _ts2 = _this select 1; _ts3 = _this select 2; _ts4 = _this select 3;
_th1 = _this select 4; _th2 = _this select 5; _th3 = _this select 6; _th4 = _this select 7;
_exceptions = ["M1030","MMT_USMC","TowingTractor","ATV_US_EP1","M1030_US_DES_EP1","ATV_CZ_EP1","Old_bike_TK_INS_EP1","Old_bike_TK_CIV_EP1","Old_moto_TK_Civ_EP1","TT650_TK_CIV_EP1"];
while {true} do {
	if (rain > 0 && alive player) then {
		_l1 = (2*(([rain,0,0.5,0,1] call XfInterpolate) min ([rain,0,0.5,1,0] call XfInterpolate)))^0.5;
		_l2 = (2*(([rain,0.25,0.75,0,1] call XfInterpolate) min ([rain,0.25,0.75,1,0] call XfInterpolate)))^0.5;
		_l3 = (2*(([rain,0.5,1,0,1] call XfInterpolate) min ([rain,0.5,1,1,0] call XfInterpolate)))^0.5;
		_l4 = (([rain,0.75,1,0,1] call XfInterpolate))^0.5; //The ^0.5 is due to mixing not being logarithmic, 50%+50% != 100% wrt db.
		_dist = 9;
		if ((player != vehicle player) && !(vehicle player isKindOf "ParachuteBase") && !(vehicle player in _exceptions) && !(cameraView in ["EXTERNAL","GROUP"])) then {
			switch (true) do {
				case ((vehicle player isKindOf "Car") || (vehicle player isKindOf "Air")) : {
					_ts1 attachTo [vehicle player,[0,5,_dist-(_dist*_l1)]];
					_ts2 attachTo [vehicle player,[0,5,_dist-(_dist*_l2)]];
					_ts3 attachTo [vehicle player,[0,5,_dist-(_dist*_l3)]];
					_ts4 attachTo [vehicle player,[0,5,_dist-(_dist*_l4)]];
					{_x attachTo [vehicle player, [0,0,500]]} forEach [_th1,_th2,_th3,_th4];
				};
				case (vehicle player isKindOf "Tank") : {
					_th1 attachTo [vehicle player,[0,5,_dist-(_dist*_l1)]];
					_th2 attachTo [vehicle player,[0,5,_dist-(_dist*_l2)]];
					_th3 attachTo [vehicle player,[0,5,_dist-(_dist*_l3)]];
					_th4 attachTo [vehicle player,[0,5,_dist-(_dist*_l4)]];
					{_x attachTo [vehicle player, [0,0,500]]} forEach [_ts1,_ts2,_ts3,_ts4];
				};
			};
		} else {
			{_x attachTo [vehicle player, [0,0,500]]} forEach [_ts1,_ts2,_ts3,_ts4,_th1,_th2,_th3,_th4];
		};
		sleep 0.1234;
	} else {
		{_x attachTo [vehicle player, [0,0,500]]} forEach [_ts1,_ts2,_ts3,_ts4,_th1,_th2,_th3,_th4];
		sleep 1.2345;
	};
};
};

class CfgSounds {
sounds[] = {};
class NoSound {name = "NoSound";sound[] = {"", 0, 1};titles[] = {};}; //Dummy sound needed for setSoundEffect command, due to stupid bug in engine.
};

class CfgSFX {
class rain_soft_1 {name = "rain_soft_1";sounds[]={sound1};sound1[]={sounds\rain_soft_1.ogg,0.4,1,10,1,0,0,0};empty[]= {"",0,0,0,0,0,0,0};};
class rain_soft_2 {name = "rain_soft_2";sounds[]={sound1};sound1[]={sounds\rain_soft_2.ogg,0.6,1,10,1,0,0,0};empty[]= {"",0,0,0,0,0,0,0};};
class rain_soft_3 {name = "rain_soft_3";sounds[]={sound1};sound1[]={sounds\rain_soft_3.ogg,0.8,1,10,1,0,0,0};empty[]= {"",0,0,0,0,0,0,0};};
class rain_soft_4 {name = "rain_soft_4";sounds[]={sound1};sound1[]={sounds\rain_soft_4.ogg,1.0,1,10,1,0,0,0};empty[]= {"",0,0,0,0,0,0,0};};
class rain_hard_1 {name = "rain_hard_1";sounds[]={sound1};sound1[]={sounds\rain_hard_1.ogg,0.4,1,10,1,0,0,0};empty[]= {"",0,0,0,0,0,0,0};};
class rain_hard_2 {name = "rain_hard_2";sounds[]={sound1};sound1[]={sounds\rain_hard_2.ogg,0.6,1,10,1,0,0,0};empty[]= {"",0,0,0,0,0,0,0};};
class rain_hard_3 {name = "rain_hard_3";sounds[]={sound1};sound1[]={sounds\rain_hard_3.ogg,0.8,1,10,1,0,0,0};empty[]= {"",0,0,0,0,0,0,0};};
class rain_hard_4 {name = "rain_hard_4";sounds[]={sound1};sound1[]={sounds\rain_hard_4.ogg,1.0,1,10,1,0,0,0};empty[]= {"",0,0,0,0,0,0,0};};
};

9) Volume control directly from the play/say commands, and preferably EQ control too if implemented. See the script above. It's absolutely ridiculous having to move several triggers up and down to simulate volume dynamically.

10) Get the speed of sound right. Ideally this would include engine sounds, to prevent engine shutdown, then a while later you hear the explosion that caused it.

11) Complete support for looped sounds, not only for cfgSFX based ones. Let us set a switch on the class that makes it loopable, so we can use say and playSound commands with loop support. Ideally it would support cue points that defines different loops within the same sound. Consider a vehicle engine sound, where you only have a single soundfile with startup, different rpms, transition sounds, and shutdown sounds all in one. I.e. check out MSFS use of loops on the cockpit gyro sounds. Battery on - sounds starts playing from the beginning, past the loop starts, and starts looping when it reaches loop end, but will play from loop end to file end when battery is shut off. Did I mention it does this in stereo, making it less weary on the ear in the long run? :)

12) For sound modding, make all parameters available always. I can't have touchdown sounds because surface type is not available to airplanes. And I couldn't do the rain thingy above as addon since camPos is not available for ambient sounds, or ambient parameter rain is not available to vehicles. More flexibility from the engine itself in other words.

i have not encounted this problem.. mainly because im up in the air, but when i am on the ground and get hit by a bullet then ii here the sound it adds realism to the game.

The tweeting bird thing is very annoying. I really don't like it when I'm blazing away with a Blackhawk mounted minigun and something goes "tweet-tweet".

The AK sounds also need to be fixed desperately. They sound like BB guns, not something that can cause permanent ear damage.

i have not encounted this problem.. mainly because im up in the air

Actually that is another problem. Up in the air and out to sea, there is deafening silence. Wouldn't there be at least some wind up there or sound of waves near the sea? Current solution now which feels a bit weird to say the least, is some kind of looping playSound going on for a HALO player and the boats themselves generating the sound of sea. Attach a CRCC on a truck at some mountain, and enjoy the horror... :(

I think sound is fine. There are many, many more annoying errors (visual/ model/ config) that could use fixing before anything gets done with the sound.

Sample length... that is my major want. At the moment there's no way to determine the length of a sample, this makes things like sleeps a guessing game when using dynamic samples with varying lengths.

We don't want to control loops with sleep, as sleep is dynamic itself depending on mission load (afaik). Proper loop control is what we need and the only thing that has it is cfgSFX (which has its own problems, see my post above).

@-=seany=-:

Those are related to content, not engine.

We don't want to control loops with sleep, as sleep is dynamic itself depending on mission load (afaik). Proper loop control is what we need and the only thing that has it is cfgSFX (which has its own problems, see my post above).

@-=seany=-:

Those are related to content, not engine.

Not controlling loops, I want to know when my sample has STARTED and FINISHED so that I can deal with the object playing it (delete it). Currently I just have to set delete times at the highest sample length, which is silly. Only way I could do it presently is individually array my sound names with corresponding lenths and select 0 select 1 the SAMPLE and LENGTH, but this is silly when you have hundreds of samples.