[fightermedic]

hello ye (sound)coders
here is a pretty minor thing that is bugging me to no end:
the volume of the engine sound of your own ship is currently depending on the ship's current speed in relation to the ship's maximum speed
this leads to the following: if newtonan dampening is active, and if you turn around your ship fast, the engine sound will drop to zero, and then slowly increase again as you gain speed DESPITE your engine working at full power all the time, because it even needs to accelerate your ship in the opposite direction it is currently moving
(you can check this e.g. in Diaspora if you like)

how to improve it:
the volume should change according to the level the throttle is set to -> full throtle = full volume, 1/3 of throttle = 1/3 of max volume etc.
afterburner should be max volume + afterburner sound
completely independent from current speed

this sounds like a rather easy change to me, and to some effect, at least for cockpit addicts like myself
opinions? and more important: would somebody be willing to make the change?please?

[Dragon]

Great idea.

[Kopachris]

Simple change to update_throttle_sound() in hud.cpp.  Should I post a .diff or open a Mantis issue?

[niffiwan]

Current policy favours opening a mantis issue

[Kopachris]

Current policy favours opening a mantis issue

Done: http://scp.indiegames.us/mantis/view.php?id=2902

[z64555]

I would like to point out that the retail behavior is to have the engine volume increase as your speed increases, not whether or not how much power you've given to your engines.

I suggest making this an option for mods, but that probably means more work to get the .tbl's to account for species, ships, etc.

P.S. Hopefully when I'm more coherent tomorrow I'll be able to dive a bit more in detail. Quite tired at the moment.

[Kopachris]

[redacted after z64 had some coffee and explained himself better]

[Mongoose]

The standing rule when it comes to changing the gameplay behavior of retail is to delve into creating options for mods, and rightly so, but this is a purely-cosmetic change that was arguably an incorrect behavior in retail.  In what way does it make sense for engine volume to be tied to a ship's speed, instead of, y'know, what the engines are actually doing?  I don't think I'd ever consciously observed that up to this point, but the more I think about it, the more it seems like the original behavior is just broken.

[Zacam]

I agree that the behaviour derived from retail is broken. Sound should equalize to the amount of power going to the engines, not the speed the craft is going at.

If anything, making it so that the sound increases based on speed vs. power should be optional for Atmospheric Flight mods.

[Echelon9]

This will be a post-3.7.0 Final code change, given how close we are to release and in place code freeze.

[fightermedic]

If anything, making it so that the sound increases based on speed vs. power should be optional for Atmospheric Flight mods.

i was thinking of something like this too, but did forget to post it

thanks for making the change guys

[z64555]

The way I see it, the ambient engine noise in FS1 & 2 serves as an audible cue to the pilot to how fast they're actually going. By removing this cue, you impair the pilot's ability to judge their speed when making maneuvers, as then they would only have their speed gauge to go by. It's possible that chose to link the engine noise to the craft speed of the craft (vs. linking it to throttle position) so as to reduce the number of concurrent sounds. They probably felt that knowing how fast you were going took precedence over how much power you had through your engine at a given time.

Yes, I do feel that the engine noise would be more suited to being linked to the throttle position / rate of acceleration, but I also feel that there should be an option for mods to still use the sound vs. speed in addition to the sound vs. throttle position.

I can't seem to make a solid decision on whether or not the default behavior should be volume/speed or volume/power... 


[edited to possibly make my opinion clearer]
[edit2 - engine wash != ambient engine noise]

[Luis Dias]

Retail or not, it's bad physics.  Seems like an oversight on [V]'s part.

OMG ROFLMAO

[chief1983]

Just to play devil's advocate here, what if the current behavior has served as more of a useful subconscious cue to the player?  Being to able to tell from the sound how high your throttle is gives you less useful input than how fast your ship is moving.  Perhaps it's more useful to have the sound increase with speed?

[Kopachris]

Just to play devil's advocate here, what if the current behavior has served as more of a useful subconscious cue to the player?  Being to able to tell from the sound how high your throttle is gives you less useful input than how fast your ship is moving.  Perhaps it's more useful to have the sound increase with speed?

After talking with z64, we're certain this is why [V] wrote it that way.  Personally, I don't feel it's necessary, and feel it actually detracts from the sense of immersion.  Others might disagree.

Then again, the whole "limited velocity" thing has never really been realistic.  What would be nice would be if we could 1) handle engine loop volume more realistically (i.e. based on actual acceleration, so volume decreases as you reach the speed you were accelerating to), and 2) automatically transfer energy from engines to shields and weapons when we're at max speed.  (2) at least would have to be a mod option, though, since it might throw off mission balance in retail.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

For what it's worth, I've been using my speed indicator and how fast stuff is moving around me to tell how fast my ship is going. Especially since there is usually a large number of other sounds playing at the same time, and that most of them are both louder and much more important than my current speed.

[mjn.mixael]

Just to play devil's advocate here, what if the current behavior has served as more of a useful subconscious cue to the player?  Being to able to tell from the sound how high your throttle is gives you less useful input than how fast your ship is moving.  Perhaps it's more useful to have the sound increase with speed?

After talking with z64, we're certain this is why [V] wrote it that way.  Personally, I don't feel it's necessary, and feel it actually detracts from the sense of immersion.  Others might disagree.

Then again, the whole "limited velocity" thing has never really been realistic.  What would be nice would be if we could 1) handle engine loop volume more realistically (i.e. based on actual acceleration, so volume decreases as you reach the speed you were accelerating to), and 2) automatically transfer energy from engines to shields and weapons when we're at max speed.  (2) at least would have to be a mod option, though, since it might throw off mission balance in retail.

Even option 1 should be a mod option. I don't want you realism forced into my freespace.

[Mongoose]

Just to play devil's advocate here, what if the current behavior has served as more of a useful subconscious cue to the player?  Being to able to tell from the sound how high your throttle is gives you less useful input than how fast your ship is moving.  Perhaps it's more useful to have the sound increase with speed?

The thing is, though, there are very few times in your average mission scenario where your throttle setting is going to be substantially different than your sustained speed.  Obviously, if you keep your throttle maxed, you're going to hit max speed pretty soon.  If you have it set to some defined value less than max, you're probably keeping pace with a slower ship, so you'll be presumably holding that speed as well.  And in the midst of combat, you're going to be pulsing off and on the afterburner enough that your specific throttle setting may not even matter much.

Honestly, either way, I think the engine sound is enough in the background that it doesn't serve as much of an audio cue even now.  I wasn't even aware that the volume was speed-dependent instead of throttle-dependent until this thread.

[fightermedic]

yea, this is only really noticable with more realistic flight models, where you loose speed a lot when turning, and with louder cockpit sounds than retail
i didn't even KNOW there is engine sound of you own ship until diaspora

[Kolgena]

Just to clarify: Throttle is the thin horizontal line on your left central HUD gauge that you move up or down with a, z, -, =, [, ], \, and speed is how full the gauge actually is.

I definitely have to second Chief on this. When it comes to how exactly changing engine (wooshing) sounds impacts retail, it comes down to this:

Existing behavior vs:
1. Hitting A or Z instantaneously silences or maxes out the engine woosh sound. This may sound bad/be weird, or it might be exactly what people want. Hitting - or = may or may not introduce "staircased" volume, depending on how smooth the throttle is capable of changing.
2. When hitting \, I no longer can hear when I actually reach top speed, since the woosh maxes out in volume instantly. Similarly, it becomes harder to tell when I've come to a stop. May be of importance in mods that use ships without HUDS but the retail flight model (BP space suit, for example).
3. We can no longer hear acceleration.

I'm all for making this a feature (sounds very useful/smart/necessary for modified flight models--hell, even gliding is really weird with existing sound behavior), but am all against making this default behavior.