Project Reality Professional Field work trip

[Booyak]

it does. (but only close by the player)

But it doesnt sound much like the csmv3 crack or the cracks you hear in war footage. In pr it sounds very different.

[JONES]

@ claymore

So you say bfbc2 audio is not realistic? in what way? I fired a weapon myself and the echo effect after that is realy loud, imo the sound of bfbc2 come closer than any other game i ever played tbh.

While the rest of the game is arcade, the sound is by far the most impressive and immersive ever done for a videogame, now maybe you ment they are beefed up or dont compare to the weapon or vehicle in reality, yeah maybe but this can be changed...

[AfterDune]

But it doesnt sound much like the csmv3 crack or the cracks you hear in war footage. In pr it sounds very different.

We were complimented last week, during the Bovington Sound Trip, that our bullet flyby and "crack" sounds were very realistic. Those were serving soldiers mind you .

[Booyak]

Ah ok those guys must know I guess youtube vids are bad sound quality then watch this:
<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/bDYjNao0YTw&hl ... ram><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/bDYjNao0YTw&hl=de_DE&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>[/youtube]
At the first seconds thats the sound I meant. Never really heard this in PR but if the soldiers say its good it is good.

[Twisted Helix]

At the first seconds thats the sound I meant. Never really heard this in PR but if the soldiers say its good it is good.

Yes, thats right. Its because the way the BF2 engine works. Ideally bullets passing far away give a sonic crack ... those passing right close by actually give a wizzing/whistiling sound. The sonic boom has no time to develop.

They have it right in ARMA , but in BF2 all that could be done was create a zone around the player where another sound sounds and it cant be that big. So you just get the sonic cracks close and quite loud (and no wizzes). Its larger than life apparently, as has been commented by many people .... not that thats a bad thing ... all adds to the sense of tension when coming under fire in game. And after all ... that is the feeling that is trying to be conveyed. Its a common motif in film ... sounds are made larger than life to make up for all the other senses that are missing.

[Jaymz]

Ah ok those guys must know I guess youtube vids are bad sound quality then watch this:
<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/bDYjNao0YTw&hl ... ram><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/bDYjNao0YTw&hl=de_DE&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>[/youtube]
At the first seconds thats the sound I meant. Never really heard this in PR but if the soldiers say its good it is good.

I have spent countless hours trying to get a system that allows us to do that in BF2.

[Twisted Helix]

If anyone wishes to know more about it, there is a superb research paper here ...

--> http://www.coe.montana.edu/ee/rmaher/pu ... 09-113.pdf

It details very closely the characteristics of the sonic boom and the angle of incidence of the wavefront which is dependent on the speed of the bullet.

Thats a good vid actually. Though some of the firing at the start is pretty chaotic.

[3===SPECTER===3]

Ah ok those guys must know I guess youtube vids are bad sound quality then watch this:
<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/bDYjNao0YTw&hl ... ram><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/bDYjNao0YTw&hl=de_DE&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>[/youtube]
At the first seconds thats the sound I meant. Never really heard this in PR but if the soldiers say its good it is good.

At :23 in the video, i smell a new loadout for the Americans. M4 w/ M203, and an AT-4 strapped to my back we'll call it Super Specialist lol

[Claymore]

@ Jones

I'm not saying it's bad, BC2 is I believe the best sounding military game ever, when it comes to audio quality. But they focused on effect rather than realism - just compare it to some war footage and you'll realize that the arma 2 mods are much closer and PR with X-fi installed is surprisingly good as well (occlusion, reverb, sonic cracks, high frequency attenuation with increasing distance and so on... the effects are quite subtle and don't try to be "better than real" so it's good to have headphones).

There are several reasons why BC2 gives such a good impression

1 - They use top quality sounds - their sound guy is unbelievably good but he preferred good sounding samples over realistic sounding samples.

2 - The Frostbite engine has something that DICE called "high dynamic range sound", which is basically a smart compressor or a given number of smart compressors that take care of the final mix and process the sound "on the fly". A regular compressor would either have a problem with huge explosions or create some latency on the output while Frostbite compressor gets "hints" from other parts of the engine and can lower the volume before the explosion actually goes off. It's a really cool system if you ask me. This approach is not realistic but you don't want to hear jets at 130 db either. With this, it is possible to keep realistic volume ratio between sounds without dramatic changes in overall volume during gameplay. Somebody is trying to replicate this for Arma 2 already YouTube - HARCP - Dynamic Sound System Demo 2

3 - background war sounds - they work like a music in a bar in this game

4 - convolution reverb - this is the highest quality method available today and also the most demanding. The approaches may differ but it requires either a lot of CPU power or memory. Core 1 should be dedicated to audio only with the rest of the game running on the other cores, if available, so I guess DICE went for the 1st option. The fact that DICE mentioned their audio engine does adapt it's requirements to the CPU speed also suggests that.

All of that it nice but I fired a weapon myself quite a few times and reality doesn't sound as good as BC2 I like it, it fits perfectly to it's gameplay but I think that more realistic games deserve something that's more accurate.

[Twisted Helix]

2 - The Frostbite engine has something that DICE called "high dynamic range sound", which is basically a smart compressor or a given number of smart compressors that take care of the final mix and process the sound "on the fly". A regular compressor would either have a problem with huge explosions or create some latency on the output while Frostbite compressor gets "hints" from other parts of the engine and can lower the volume before the explosion actually goes off. It's a really cool system if you ask me.

The HDR sound claim of DICE is not a correct claim. HDR sound has been around for a while in the ProAudio field and it involves bit shifting on fixed point systems. What DICE have done is emulate the replay gain algorithm in mp3s. It is automatic make up gain, nothing more, and is certainly NOT high dynamic range sound (which involves increasing the resolution in the range, NOT increasing volume of quiet sounds). Look ahead compressors are nothing new either ... again been around in the ProAudio field for donkeys years.

Replaygain is one of those things that sound engineers cringe at, but realize you have to have in today's world of compromised playback systems. (like on mp3 player headphones in a car)

We have been thinking of a similar kind of system , one where either the system detects the users hardware, or the user enters it ... and then the system will either play back a set of compressed sounds that have dynamic range reduced for playback on cheap systems ... or they can have full range sounds, and the system boosts playback level to compensate for the loss of RMS level.

4 - convolution reverb - this is the highest quality method available today and also the most demanding. The approaches may differ but it requires either a lot of CPU power or memory. Core 1 should be dedicated to audio only with the rest of the game running on the other cores, if available, so I guess DICE went for the 1st option. The fact that DICE mentioned their audio engine does adapt it's requirements to the CPU speed also suggests that.

Have to say ... running convolution reverb on a game is slightly overkill IMO. Yes ... they are the best way to get a realistic space .. but you just get one space that the convolution imprint is for. To get another space you need to take another print. I can see how this would give ultra realistic sound though ... as you could 'bake' a sound map into your game where different convolutions were stored for different spaces.

I believe there is a Dynamic Sound Mod for Arma2 that is being made that tries to do something similar.

[Claymore]

The HDR sound claim of DICE is not a correct claim. HDR sound has been around for a while in the ProAudio field and it involves bit shifting on fixed point systems. What DICE have done is emulate the replay gain algorithm in mp3s. It is automatic make up gain, nothing more, and is certainly NOT high dynamic range sound (which involves increasing the resolution in the range, NOT increasing volume of quiet sounds). Look ahead compressors are nothing new either ... again been around in the ProAudio field for donkeys years.

Thanks for the info, I am not be completely correct with the terminology as it's not directly related to my work. In one of their interviews, they mentioned that 16bit depth is enough for them as the volume will never get quiet enough for the bit depth to be a problem. So they shift voume on fixed volume systems instead of bits but HDR seems to be a good marketting motto...
I'd give DICE some credit for innovation though (not in audio processing in general but for implementation of new approaches in game audio design) as this is the first game I played that uses game events as triggers for the compressor (the look ahead function cannot be triggered by sound as in some cases the compressor kicks in while the sound is not being played yet).

Replaygain is one of those things that sound engineers cringe at, but realize you have to have in today's world of compromised playback systems. (like on mp3 player headphones in a car)

That thing kills music

We have been thinking of a similar kind of system , one where either the system detects the users hardware, or the user enters it ... and then the system will either play back a set of compressed sounds that have dynamic range reduced for playback on cheap systems ... or they can have full range sounds, and the system boosts playback level to compensate for the loss of RMS level.

We can't have the full real life volume range anyway, so it has to be somehow compressed. As long as it's not too aggressive, it will produce great results. Good luck with that

Have to say ... running convolution reverb on a game is slightly overkill IMO.

Overkill it is but today, with so many different audio cards on the market, every company having it's own version of effects and Creative Labs preserving their pressious EAX standards there is simply no way to achieve quality for everyone. I can't blame DICE for raising the minimum specs because of that, especially considering it was developed for PS3 as well. At lot of other gaming companies seem to go this direction.

[M_Striker]

UK_Force;1391228']
These are to be used for all our 3 engines within Project Reality as required (and VBS2).
The plan will incorporate the following vehicles all recorded professionally

WARRIOR
SCIMITAR
PANTHER
BULLDOG (Upgraded 432 Variant)
TROJAN
TITAN
CHALLENGER 2 BATTLE TANK
LANDROVER
AS90
MLRS
WARTHOG
MASTIFF
MAN TRUCK
JACKAL
QUAD
SPRINGER
VIXEN
HUSKY
VECTRA

No helicopters?

[Hitperson]

bovington is royal armoured corps.

there wouldn't be any helo's there.

[M_Striker]

bovington is royal armoured corps.

there wouldn't be any helo's there.

Do you guys have any plans to go to an air base then?

[Hitperson]

i wouldn't know.

besides helos are devided up between the army air corps, the raf and the fleet air arm.

they don't tend to share aircraft.

[Twisted Helix]

Oh there were helicopters .... circling round and round and landing on the playing fields outside front of officers mess.

The RAF have a training base nearby I think because they were practising picking things up. Even heard a chinook in the distance as well.

The possibilities of getting some aircraft recording were mentioned ..... I believe I heard the phrase ... "stretching it"

[Megagoth1702]

So how about some samples...

[Twisted Helix]

Soon .... very soon

[Claymore]

Soon .... very soon

Can't wait

[knoxious_t]

i've always respected you devs for how much you put into the audio! love it, good work