Brilliant Idea!!!

[Fixture]

....which means I'm probably not the first to think of it.

When you are watching the action, why not make all sounds reach your point of view with the same delay experienced in real life?

For instance, if one were standing next to an 88, and it fires on a target 1000m away, the sound of the round impacting should reach you 4.21 seconds after the 88 fired, or 2.92 seconds after the round impacted downrange. These results obtained using 343 m/s as the speed of sound and 773 m/s as the velocity of an 88.

As one can see, the sound delay even for the typically short ranges in CMBO would be significant. This is not really a gameplay issue, but more of a "hey, that's neat!" type of addition.

Ignore me like a redheaded stepchild if someone has already suggested this.

fixture

P.S. Yes, I realize that this board will be flooded with "Sound bug in CM" threads if this were implemented.

[Slapdragon]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Fixture:

....which means I'm probably not the first to think of it.

When you are watching the action, why not make all sounds reach your point of view with the same delay experienced in real life?

For instance, if one were standing next to an 88, and it fires on a target 1000m away, the sound of the round impacting should reach you 4.21 seconds after the 88 fired, or 2.92 seconds after the round impacted downrange. These results obtained using 343 m/s as the speed of sound and 773 m/s as the velocity of an 88.

As one can see, the sound delay even for the typically short ranges in CMBO would be significant. This is not really a gameplay issue, but more of a "hey, that's neat!" type of addition.

Ignore me like a redheaded stepchild if someone has already suggested this.

fixture

P.S. Yes, I realize that this board will be flooded with "Sound bug in CM" threads if this were implemented. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Its an engine thing, but when CM gets true surround sound you could program stereo seperation and doppler into 5 channel systems. The only problem is it would sound weird on single speaker setups.

Might be neat though. Sounds like a lot of work to do 5+1 ready sound mods unless you assume all sounds are point source and figure separation in the software, but then your sound mod would have to include a speed / doppler variable.

[Bil Hardenberger]

Not an impossible feature, it is already in Steel Beasts

[Pak40]

Good idea. Probably not possible in the current engine but definitely a great feature for future versions.

It's a rather simple calculation. The velocity of the gun has nothing to do with it. All explosions and noises will have an invisible sound shockwave that starts when the sound occurs. The shockwave travels at the speed of sound and when it intersects with the position of the camera then the player hears the sound. So no matter where the camera is, it is heard at the correct time. This means that all sounds are calculated to play in playback mode and not in the turn calculation.

good idea again.

[ 10-02-2001: Message edited by: Pak40 ]

[Fixture]

It doesn't seem like a particularly difficult thing to implement. The velocity of shot from guns is already calculated and displayed visually. I am by no means a programmer, so I can't say how difficult it would be.

Slapdragon- why would you need a fancy-schmancy five speaker system and all sorts of sound mod whiz-bang stuff? It seems like standard desktop speakers could replicate sound delay adequetly.

Now what would be REALLY neat, and much harder to implement, would be some kind of TRUE doppler program that both accounts for distance from sound source in respect to delay, but also in respect to the actual sound. A rifle heard from five feet away sounds much different from a rifle heard from 1000 yards, and I'm not just talking volume. Some of the high frequencies are washed out by distance, leaving a much "duller" sound. Some sound mods for the game already do this for infantry weapons, and it sounds cool, even though they are simply .wav files. The engine already calculates volume, right?

Do the game designers ever check this board?

fixture

[Michael Emrys]

It might be a trifle more CPU intensive than some of the above posters are thinking since the computer will have to simultaneously calculate the delay for all sounds occurring in the turn at that moment. Each time the player moves the camera, a new set of calculations will have to begin, with a possible hesitation at that point.

That said, it might not be impossible to do in the future and would be a neat feature.

Michael

[Fixture]

Ahh yes, I didn't think about that, Michael. That would be a little intensive, but computers get more powerful every day.

And doesn't the game calculate volume as related to distance, and re-calculates when you move your POV? Isn't this largely the same animal as a delay function, There are certainly a finite number of sounds in any one turn, and the equation is very simple for determining delay. How hard would it be to calculate t=v/d for fewer than 25 sounds at any given moment?

Fixture

[Pak40]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Fixture:

It doesn't seem like a particularly difficult thing to implement. The velocity of shot from guns is already calculated and displayed visually. I am by no means a programmer, so I can't say how difficult it would be.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

hmm, did you read my last post? The velocity of the round has nothing to do with the delay of the sound. The time between the sight of the round striking the ground/target and hearing the explosion is based ONLY on the position of the explosion AND the position of the camera. Keep in mind that the camera can move between the time that the explosion is seen and when it is heard, thus altering the delay in sound.

[Brian Rock]

Pak40, I think the point Fixture was making was that the game already handled similar maths, and therefore that it wasn't something the engine shouldn't be able to deal with.

In any case I think people have missed Bil's post that Steel Beasts already does this. And yes, it is cool.

[Slapdragon]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Fixture:

Slapdragon- why would you need a fancy-schmancy five speaker system and all sorts of sound mod whiz-bang stuff? It seems like standard desktop speakers could replicate sound delay adequetly.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

The point is that they cannot, not really, and most of the important audio advances from stereo seperation to surround to 5+1 involve additional speaakers and seperation of frequencies by more accurate speakers. So what you would need to a system that could be turned on and off, because the neatest sound would be worthless with a tinny center mount PC speaker.

[Fixture]

Pak40-

I understand that the velocity of the round has nothing to do with the delay in sound. When i refer to v (as in velocity), I am referring to the speed of sound. (343 m/s, depending on air temp, pressure, etc., etc.)

My mention of the modeling of the velocity of a given round was, as Brian said, an illustration of how the engine already processes similar equations.

I apologize for any misunderstanding.

Fixture

{edit for clarity}

[ 10-03-2001: Message edited by: Fixture ]

[ElGuapo]

Scenario:

I am playing a turn movie. The camera is on top of a hill. A few tanks fire in front of me, zooming by on the left. No problem.

Now, I play the same movie again, but this time I move the camera all around. I use the CTRL button to jump all over the place rapidly. I pan, move toward incoming fire, moving perpendicular to other fire. A bunch of arty rounds whistle in. Machien gun fitre comes in from a dozen different angles at a dozen different velocities, changing constantly as I move the camera around like a madman. Everything is being calculated in complex calculus, floating points, tangets, vectors, and multiple hundreds of angles and variables by the computer.

The sound programmer at Big Time lies on the floor in a cube, his brain fused together in a wad of neural matter that smells faintly of an electrical fire. My CPU melts down and my Tiger tank appears to be doing a dance the old Paula Abdul song "I take, two steps forward I take two steps back".

Great idea, but I don't see it getting implemented. The way it works right now is very nice, with sound fading the further away you get from it.

[Panzer76]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Fixture:

Ahh yes, I didn't think about that, Michael. That would be a little intensive, but computers get more powerful every day.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Not these peoples machines!

[Apa]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>How hard would it be to calculate t=v/d for fewer than 25 sounds at any given moment? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

This calculation would give some funny results. the further you are from the sound source the sooner you will hear it and if you happen to be on top of the sound source, you will never hear the sound. Funny, isn't it

I don't know how much cpu power is needed for delayed sound playing, but propably not too much. Distance calculation is fast, and t=d/v isn't too complex either. Only problem that I can see of (well, I don't know too much about programming...), is how to make the system simple enough, so that these calculations doesn't need to be calculated for every frame. And even then it wouldn't be too cpu intensive.

[MikeyD]

I recall in the theatrical release of that 1980(?) film where Communists invades America... that one with Patrick Swayze or whatever his name is paying guerilla... in an early scene they show a bombing (napalm?) in the distance and wait the required number of seconds before the sound is heard. Though accurate, I guess it was sufficiently annoying to the audiance that for TV release they rematched the sound with the explosion. Some people just can't take too much reality.

[Thomm]

And if you jump around during replay you could actually hear the same sound twice ...

[WWB]

Well, the timing is not there, but I have noticed that explosions are alot louder if the camera is next to the exploding thing.

WWB