Quote from sinbad :

I think "almost no wind noise" would be wrong: link
But I think it's not the right sound and maybe does carry too far in open spaces.

The audio in that link, I think, is less wind bluster and more distortion. Looking at the sound wave of that clip, it looks supsiciously like squared off waves (although resampled at least once since, so it's not so easy to tell).. but it sounds to me like the microphone on the camera itself is overwhelmed. I was about the distance from the car at Donington as the person holding the camera in that clip, and I just didn't hear anything over the sound of the car with my own ears.

I do agree, the effect in that clip (whatever causes it) makes LFS compare very well, now, with the new patch!

[edit] These short videos were taken by my friend Lynne at Donington - Renault F1 Renault F1 Renault F1 Renault F1 Renault F1

There's loads of different sounds from the car.. gear whine etc, but not wind.

Thanks to all who answered my questions on updating. I d/l'd 32, played it for a few minutes, then autoupdated to 33.

Autoupdate worked perfectly. The new track interface is nice.

Regarding the sounds, I think it's pointless to comment too deeply after 1/2 hour of playing, however, I think I'm as surprised as most everyone is.

There are bad points and good points - the sound itself seems a bit wimpy. It seems the basic sound lacks fullness, and there is some compensation attempted via effects.

I really only wanted to post with a suggestion that occured to me while playing. Take it for what it's worth, it was just a thought that occured to me.

I am a musician with a home studio. I hate putting excessive effects on vocals to make up for the lack of ambience in a home recording with moderate equipment.

One techinique I have used is to take the vocal track, copy it to a second track, and delay the track time by a small amount ( 3 to 10 ms), then pan each slightly left and right. You definatly can achieve more fullness without a noticable 'effect' being placed on it ( that is, it creates a more natural sounding fullness - I'm not talking about a large slap back delay like 20 ms or more).

This idea is likely to be of no use to you, but might be worth a try, and I hesitate not to post it on the very off chance that it did provide some assistance.

Anyway, I think it's a step in the right direction, and have no major complaints ( I can get used to it as easily as I could the original sounds).

As the sound develops, would it be possible to allow the user to choose between the original ( patch U) sounds / or the newer sounds - or would that present problems in on-line play ?

Scawen - MANY thanks for rolling out U33 so quick - really pleasing progress!

BF1 is vastly improved.. At first I was cynical of the "syntheticness" of the sound at high RPM.. now... I think it really is 90% correct.. some tweaks here and there perhaps, but this car has come on leaps and bounds in terms of sound since U32. I find myself listening really carefully for that subtle two-tone howl
Just as a side-note - there should probably be no actual sound produced when shifting gear, but a FRACTIONAL low pitch burble (to simulate the minute cut in throttle that the real thing uses while the next cog is forced into play)?

I'm really happy now with the volumes of most of the 'normal' cars. I had to remind myself that these cars are really intended to be road-going cars, on the track (though fully adjustable) and so there's no real need for them to be louder than a road car would be (if it was being driven hard, of course)

I'm very impressed that the gear whine now starts off quietly and becomes more pronounced in the FZ50 GTR - JUST like the real deal! To be honest, the FZ50 does seem a little more refined that I would imagine... But I've never taken a ride in a Porsche, so maybe they really are this quiet .. or maybe I should be turning up my speakers

Equally, I'm impressed by the cut in gear whine in 'normal' road cars, and the delicious wastegate flutter on the turbo GTRs. Also - THANK YOU for altering the sound option for echo! I've disabled it completely and this has increased my enjoyment.

BallBearingTurbo - I'm intrigued by your comments on the science of the sounds being produced and agree with what you're saying. There is still a bit of rasp missing up at the high RPMs. However, if this rasp is actually caused by vibrations of metal and solid parts of the car, I can imagine that will be tough to simulate :/

There were also comments by jtw62074 about how to possibly simulate sound output variation for the engine block vibrating on its mounts... Very interesting stuff! Wonder if this could make a big difference?


Keep up the good work Scawen

PSX

Quote from three_jump :

A question about the auto updater (which worked fine here):

Is / will there be an option to skip the test patches so you get only informed about "official" releases?
At the moment LFS seems to check for all new patches with the first request of the server list (meaning you only get reminded once and every new start of lfs).

Btw: at the moment it's not even saying that it's a TEST patch, it just says "LFS_32 TO U33", but as it's a test patch (and may contain new bugs) it should be stated clearly for all people what kind of patch they download

My Idea was to have a tick box in the misc part to allow you to go onto the test patch stream, or stick on the mainstream patches, so you could auto update to test patches, or stay on major patches simply.

Comment about autoupdate from a dialup guy (hehe, see where this is going? ) Now, I imagine U33 is quite a small patch in file size as not much was listed. I haven't done U32 yet as I forgot to bring it home from work. But, I'm hoping U33 was not only a small update for the sounds and other stuff that was listed, but also a test of the autoupdate. I'm hoping that there aren't many updates that are only available in the future with the autoupdate.

That said, I'll still update to U33 (once I get U32 home). I'm curious how long it hangs me up from running LFS or pretty much doing anything on the net while updating.

The U33 sounds are just great. Waste improvement over U32

The autoupdater for now will only give you the test patches, since the autoupdater itself is only a test. So, once the autoupdater goes final, then you will not even get the option test patches. Scawen has already said that he won't post test patches on liveforspeed.net because people will think LFS is crappy just because they d/l a test patch. So, if he doesn't wanna put it on the main page, I don't think he will enable test patches to be auto-updated in LFS.

(Correct me if im wrong, Scawen )

Quote from Flycantbird :

As the sound develops, would it be possible to allow the user to choose between the original ( patch U) sounds / or the newer sounds - or would that present problems in on-line play ?

That's an interesting question.
O would like to know that too.

That is why I am suggesting to make it a tickbox, or an edit of the cfg.cfg file, adding a line at the bottom saying "Include Test Patches in Auto Update" with a 1 or 0 value to specify yes or no.

Wow, huge improvement in U33

Couple of things...

1) The air rushing in sound on naturally aspirated cars, esp the FZR is still far too prominent.

2) For the turbo cars - the air rushing in should be based solely on impeller speed, specifically how much air the impeller is pumping - NOT how much air the engine is actually consuming. . IE, in the XRR / FXR I note that the sound of the air is louder at 7000RPM than at 4500RPM, even though the impeller is at full speed at 4500RPM. In the turbo GTRs, the air could be a hint louder overall... Those cars have no deadening in them and 2 atmospheres of boost... They're not shy! Erm, ALSO, the air sound needs to be more like "sssssssssssss" than "ffffffffffffff", kind of a combo of both...

3) Still a hint too much gear whine in the FXO I think.

4) BF1 is pretty darn good now, it's JUST NOT LOUD enough. Look behind your head and what do you see - a mammoth air intake

I LOVE the GTR Turbos now, the XRR is really beginning to sound a lot more like a 500HP turbo 4!

If I leave the engine sound at default, and crank the skid & wind volume up, it sounds about right to me. Except the wind volume could STILL be louder I think.

Regarding the scripting - is there a way to bind F9 to F12 to four buttons from inside LFS?

Thanks for the great work Scawen!

edit: do keep a bit of the "ffffffffffff", just add a healthy dose of "sssssssssssss"... This should actully wind up as a pseudo- "sshshshshshshshsh" but with more of a "ssss" sound.. Try it with your lips people, you'll see! You can make the sound by starting out with a "ssss" then slowly put your upper teeth over your lower lip for the "fffffff' part...

Jeff? is the "sssssssss" and "fffffffffff" a technical term?

Wow, huge improvement with the U33 regarding sounds!!
Great work Scawen, rock on!

Blackhole Motorsports is offering the download to Test Patch U32, as Test Patches can contain Bugs and are not finished Versions it might be wise to talk to Blackhole Motorsport to not put LFS Test Patch Versions for download because some people might get stuck on an unstable Version if Blackhole doesnt stay up to date. It seems Blackhole occasionally puts a Test Patch Version for download on there site.

"Offically Quoted" by BBT "sssssssssss" and "ffffffffff"

I can see what he is saying though they could use a bit more "ssssss" in the turbo noise. What's there sounds good but it's missing this IMO.

They should align with boost PSI and not engine RPM like Jeff said.

Sorry, I missed this one.

Quote from Shotglass :

didnt want to comment on that before to keep my posts on topic but guess i can get away with meshing it into an on topic post
i understand you dont want to go into details about how you generate it but could you still answer a few general question ?
- you said its absolutely samplefree so i assume the excitation is a noise source ?

Noise source... I suppose you could say that. The data that feeds it comes from a full engine simulation I wrote probably a year ago. (I.e., bore/stroke/compression ratio, cam timing/lift, intake/exhaust dimensions and configuration, head flow rates, etc., etc..) That obviously doesn't run anywhere near real time of course, but it creates a data file that powers the audio stuff that easily runs in real time now.

Quote :

- it sounds like there sound is mostly made up of two tracks namely the explosions and some kind of mechanical noise that sets in at higher revs ... correct and what is that mechanical noise ?

Nope, it's a single exhaust pipe. I.e., pure exhaust sound with no mechanical bits in there at all. There's a little bit of a high frequency squeak in that one sample (I should have used a better one). What you're hearing there are some harmonics that come into play due to sonic velocity, the pipe length, and so on, at certain rpms. I.e., you can get standing/travelling waves at certain frequencies (rpms).

Quote :

oh and btw i like it ... sounds synthetic ? sure but it does sound a lot like an engine firing ... a very american engine but an engine nontheless

Thanks. Yes, I was going for a racing V8 like Nascar in that particular sample.

Unfortunately i'm behind a poxy server at work, how do i update the test patches as i cant get to the master server.?

Andrew

Just went for a spin around south city and slammed into a few walls. Some eerily quiet impacts I must say. I won't mention the 1000 other dissapointments I have with the new sounds. Do we really need to tell the devs what's wrong with them? It should be obvious.

Play rFactor's v8's or F1's or porsche etc, then play LFS....... it really does sound pathetic.

Sorry if my post isnt very constuctive, I just really hope the devs get the point because sound is a major part of gaming and if done badly it can ruin even the most excellent gameplay. I don't wanna have to stick to U30 forever just because the sound is horrible.

I upgraded to U33 this morning and have been driving FOX & BF1 for a while now. I think U33 is a big step forward from U32 for both and I'm happy to see things are going in the right direction. Sorry I can't provide any real feedback, I think it's difficult to describe how things could be improved. Keep up the good work Scawen and all those who are better at describing things than I am.

Quote from Enforcer-J :

I don't wanna have to stick to U30 forever just because the sound is horrible.

I can't believe that anyone can say that the old sounds are better than U33 apart from the BF1 which is still arguable. Every other car has moved forward. Still, its undeniable that they still need work.

They are getting to a sort of roaroraroooooooommm now, if that makes any sense, so definitely closer to the desired "rrroooooaaaaawrwrrwrrwararararrrrrrr". (desired sound by ORION.)

Regarding the auto update system. It's a great step forward, but you know that already. Here are some things:

1) It'd be nice to get more detailed info (like in the thread - just copy-paste) than just "sound improvements"

2) When I'm running a mod, as I always do, LFS restarts without the mod. So its:

a) start LFS with mod,
b) yay theres an update - update and auto restart LFS,
c) close LFS,
d) start LFS with mod

Quote from axus :

I can't believe that anyone can say that the old sounds are better than U33 apart from the BF1 which is still arguable. Every other car has moved forward. Still, its undeniable that they still need work.

They are getting to a sort of roaroraroooooooommm now, if that makes any sense, so definitely closer to the desired "rrroooooaaaaawrwrrwrrwararararrrrrrr". (desired sound by ORION.)

I can't believe the opposite lol. The sort of a rrrrooooooaaaaawwwwrwrwrwrwwrrrrrrr you speak of sounds laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame to me and I don't think generated sounds will ever sound anything but lame. I really hope the devs can prove me wrong if this is the direction they want to take.

Quote from SamH :

The audio in that link, I think, is less wind bluster and more distortion. Looking at the sound wave of that clip, it looks supsiciously like squared off waves (although resampled at least once since, so it's not so easy to tell).. but it sounds to me like the microphone on the camera itself is overwhelmed. I was about the distance from the car at Donington as the person holding the camera in that clip, and I just didn't hear anything over the sound of the car with my own ears.

I do agree, the effect in that clip (whatever causes it) makes LFS compare very well, now, with the new patch!

[edit] These short videos were taken by my friend Lynne at Donington - Renault F1 Renault F1 Renault F1 Renault F1 Renault F1

There's loads of different sounds from the car.. gear whine etc, but not wind.

Well to be fair, your mate is miles further away from the car in the sections where it's going anywhere near as fast as at the monza test in the video I posted and it's a much more open space. I also disagree that it's sound distortion or an overwhelming of the microphone. I really don't see how an F1 car couldn't make a significant wind noise at those sorts of speeds, but as I said previously, I don't think the sound is quite right in LFS, and it definitely travels too loud, too far, relative to how far the engine sounds travel.

Quote from Ball Bearing Turbo :

2) For the turbo cars - the air rushing in should be based solely on impeller speed, specifically how much air the impeller is pumping - NOT how much air the engine is actually consuming. . IE, in the XRR / FXR I note that the sound of the air is louder at 7000RPM than at 4500RPM, even though the impeller is at full speed at 4500RPM.

How does that work? I mean, if more air is being pumped than consumed, where is the excess air going?

More air being pumped than consumed sounds like the dump valve situation but that is not applicable for the situation you are talking about, because the dump valve doesn't open at that time, because it's spring loaded to a higher level than that, I assume.

I could try researching that myself but I'm too busy on some last fixes so it would help if you just explain exactly how the air rush can be linear with turbo speed and disregard intake speed.

The amount of air provided by the turbocharger is purely controlled by the impeller speed, I am pretty sure that ANY amount of air the impeller can produce is used by the engine, and there isn't ANY excess, although some systems have overboost protection, but this is only a problem when people fudge their TC systems to get more boost.

It must be linear, as soon as the TC is spinning at full revs, it's supplying as much air pressure as it can, the difference in TC speed between 4500rpm and 7000rpm can't be much, I think the idea here is it's air pressure, not air volume (or I could be talking complete shit )

Dump vavle is something completely different, it purely serves a purpose to keep the TC spinning once you lift off, otherwise it would stall and give you lag, which leads me to another Q (maybe not for this thread), why do we have dump valves in the cars and still too much lag?

Well the dump valve isn't something completely different, as I understand it, it opens to let out excess air when you let off the throttle, and the turbo is still spinning at high speed, forcing air towards the engine intakes when the air has nowhere to go becauise the throttle is closed. So the dump valve which is a spring loaded pressure release valve, opens so it doesn't cause overpressurisation on the engine intake side of the impeller, which could cause something to explode and also would have a braking effect of that excess pressure on the impeller (so the opening of the valve reduces the slowdown of the turbo, as you say).

But that still doesn't answer to me where the excess air goes in the stuation Ball Bearing Turbo mentioned. If the turbo is producing more air than the engine is consuming, the air must go somewhere. Actually I suspect it doesn't - and in fact danowat, as you say, there isn't any excess. I think this is more a lacking in the LFS turbo and throttle valve simulation and the air rushing sound is actually correct for the way the LFS turbo works at the moment, and its difference from how a real turbo works, is causing the air rush sound to be timed not quite as expected.

Because the air pumped by the turbo must equal the air consumed by the engine and the air released by the dump valve. But I might be missing something. Anyway, back to work!