Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: IvKir on February 23, 2011, 05:10:57 am
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In one of our discussion with Kir2Yar we came out with a nice idea about sound in space...
We all know that in vacuum there is no sound, and pilot got all info about situation wia his eyes. But he need to know what happening, for ex., behind his ship. And what we do... we install a device or soft, that converts info from radar (like charging beam cannon's, noise from near ship ant etc) into a sound and here you go - pilot hear a charging AAA beam behind him, or enemy craft or something else.
What do you think?
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Known and quite relistic explaination, most people assume that it's how it works.
It's a logical and easy to implement way to enhance pilot's situational awareness, which really helps in combat.
Sound in space was explained like that in a couple of places, like Babylon 5. There's no reason it couldn't apply to FS.
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I think "Because it's cool" works equally well as an explanation, personally. :p
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I'd would rather think it would be from a highly sophisticated amplification circuit, that would carefully monitor several microphones attached to the Hull of the ship.
Space, although largely being a vacuum, does have matter in it that can be used as a pseudo-media for sound waves to travel, although the speed at which sound travels would be greatly reduced to possibly cm or mm/s.
If shields are ion-based, then they themselves have a bit of matter, such as some form of gas or fluid. This means that if anything hit, or entered the shields, sound would travel much more quickly.
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I don't think there's enough stuff in space for any sufficient sound energy to be picked up from microphones.
Like, if lasers are hitting your shields (?) and hull, it makes sense that you'd hear it fine, but that explanation is a real stretch for sounds that aren't being made on the ship itself.
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I'd would rather think it would be from a highly sophisticated amplification circuit, that would carefully monitor several microphones attached to the Hull of the ship.
Space, although largely being a vacuum, does have matter in it that can be used as a pseudo-media for sound waves to travel, although the speed at which sound travels would be greatly reduced to possibly cm or mm/s.
If shields are ion-based, then they themselves have a bit of matter, such as some form of gas or fluid. This means that if anything hit, or entered the shields, sound would travel much more quickly.
Yeah, no. Sound waves require, at least at the frequencies we are talking about, more than a little space dust to travel across a vacuum...
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I'm sure there's been some tests on this sort of stuff, have they considered frequency shifting (instead of just just decreased volume)?
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:wtf:
Sound waves literally move air (or whatever medium they are in) molecules to transmit vibrations. Sound is essentially just vibrations. If you can't create a wave of vibrating molecules.. you can't have sounds. Period.
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It's your ship providing audio cues for situational awareness.
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That would explain why every laser in the game makes the same sound when it blows past.
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One explanation I've come across is that if a ship activates its shields within an atmosphere (either within a planetary atmosphere or a hangar bay with an air supply), air will become trapped between the shields and the hull. Any impacts on the shields would be transmitted as sound waves through the air to the hull. Of course this would only explain sounds that result from hits on the shields.
I prefer the aforementioned artificial sensory audio cue explanation for FreeSpace.
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Here's my explanation... energy weapons generate EM interference patterns that a fighter's Comm system picks up on are heard by the pilot. Different weapons have different interference patterns, and intensity of the sound comes down to the degree of interference generated (like on big beam guns) and the distance from the source. Shield impacts could be said to generate EM interference as well.
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Here's my explanation... energy weapons generate EM interference patterns that a fighter's Comm system picks up on are heard by the pilot. Different weapons have different interference patterns, and intensity of the sound comes down to the degree of interference generated (like on big beam guns) and the distance from the source. Shield impacts could be said to generate EM interference as well.
The explanation that sounds are synthesized for situational awareness is much simpler and less wrong.
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Yeah... EM interference patterns would at best be picked up as random static I'd imagine. Edit: o wait, you mean like a computer interprets the EM interference. Well, you've got to have a human-grade FFT algorithm in there to separate out all the patterns, I think.
What's wrong with a situational awareness system? It's about the only explanation that actually makes sense. (though, subluminal lasers and such means that sense doesn't matter)
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Here's my explanation... energy weapons generate EM interference patterns that a fighter's Comm system picks up on are heard by the pilot. Different weapons have different interference patterns, and intensity of the sound comes down to the degree of interference generated (like on big beam guns) and the distance from the source. Shield impacts could be said to generate EM interference as well.
The explanation that sounds are synthesized for situational awareness is much simpler and less wrong.
Yeah... EM interference patterns would at best be picked up as random static I'd imagine. Edit: o wait, you mean like a computer interprets the EM interference. Well, you've got to have a human-grade FFT algorithm in there to separate out all the patterns, I think.
What's wrong with a situational awareness system? It's about the only explanation that actually makes sense. (though, subluminal lasers and such means that sense doesn't matter)
Can't we combine the two? We could combine EM interference and doppler velocity data (i.e. radar). (BTW, for some examples of "sounds" from our sun based on doppler velocity: http://soi.stanford.edu/results/sounds.html )
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Scaled up 42,000 times. I'm not trying to knock your theory I just thought that was pretty intense.
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That would explain why every laser in the game makes the same sound when it blows past.
That or the Dev's where lazy and didn't want to make a different laser whoosh for each weapon type. :P
Here's my explanation... energy weapons generate EM interference patterns that a fighter's Comm system picks up on are heard by the pilot. Different weapons have different interference patterns, and intensity of the sound comes down to the degree of interference generated (like on big beam guns) and the distance from the source. Shield impacts could be said to generate EM interference as well.
Yeah... EM interference patterns would at best be picked up as random static I'd imagine. Edit: o wait, you mean like a computer interprets the EM interference. Well, you've got to have a human-grade FFT algorithm in there to separate out all the patterns, I think.
What's wrong with a situational awareness system? It's about the only explanation that actually makes sense. (though, subluminal lasers and such means that sense doesn't matter)
Can't we combine the two? We could combine EM interference and doppler velocity data (i.e. radar). (BTW, for some examples of "sounds" from our sun based on doppler velocity: http://soi.stanford.edu/results/sounds.html )
This doesn't really explain missile whoosh-by sounds and projectile sounds (i.e. machine guns). Missiles... MAYBE, if the radar has a high enough resolution for an object that has a frontal area no smaller than 10cm or so, but definitely not bullets.
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Well, the situational awareness computer generated sounds theory doesn't really specify how the computer decides which sounds to generate. It could be a combination of a wide variety of sensory input: EM, radar, visible light, etc. So basically anything the ship sensors could pick up would contribute toward the deal. Yup.
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Guys, guys...it's like my freshman-year physics professor said. "Space fights without sound are boring."
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no wai
See, another thing I'd find weird then is that you should wire your shields management system into your sound system, since your sound system knows exactly where everything is.
But no, you get manual control and get sub-optimal shield distributions. Rule of cool application #2 here.
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If we talk about logic, then why there is no auto-ETS? Emptied the weapon storage - redirect energy to them. Shields full - all power on the engine. Shields low - redirect energy from weapos(if not low) to shields.
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That one makes sense though. A pilot might need to run like hell, in which case he wouldn't care if his primaries energy was empty. He'd cram all energy into engines and maybe shields to aid survivability.
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That would explain why every laser in the game makes the same sound when it blows past.
That or the Dev's where lazy and didn't want to make a different laser whoosh for each weapon type. :P
It's currently not even possible to set different flyby sounds for primary weapons :(
It's been requested but no coder seems interested.
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Sound generated by ships travels through their subspace drives into the subspace aether, where other subspace drives pick it up and it is relayed into the other ships. The first few test runs of subspace drives ran into a problem as this was altogether too loud for a human pilot to endure, until a way was found to put a muffler on the subspace drive to decrease the harmonic resonance transmitted from the ships' engines and systems to each other through the subspace medium.
Maybe that's why the Shivans are so mad at us.. their masters never cared for their comfort and didn't install subspace mufflers. Could also explain why we had a time making the Shivan drives work on captured craft as they weren't designed with a muffler and the muffler interfered with its operation.
It is, however, unknown why the proximity of craft to each other in real space affects the volume of sound transmitted over subspace.
Or something like that
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Sound generated by ships travels through their subspace drives into the subspace aether, where other subspace drives pick it up and it is relayed into the other ships. The first few test runs of subspace drives ran into a problem as this was altogether too loud for a human pilot to endure, until a way was found to put a muffler on the subspace drive to decrease the harmonic resonance transmitted from the ships' engines and systems to each other through the subspace medium.
Maybe that's why the Shivans are so mad at us.. their masters never cared for their comfort and didn't install subspace mufflers. Could also explain why we had a time making the Shivan drives work on captured craft as they weren't designed with a muffler and the muffler interfered with its operation.
It is, however, unknown why the proximity of craft to each other in real space affects the volume of sound transmitted over subspace.
Or something like that
I still get sound when I tick 'no subspace drive' on the player ship
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luminiferous aether, that's how the Mi-Go fly
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I still get sound when I tick 'no subspace drive' on the player ship
Herm.. well... party pooper :P :lol:
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That would explain why every laser in the game makes the same sound when it blows past.
That or the Dev's where lazy and didn't want to make a different laser whoosh for each weapon type. :P
Here's my explanation... energy weapons generate EM interference patterns that a fighter's Comm system picks up on are heard by the pilot. Different weapons have different interference patterns, and intensity of the sound comes down to the degree of interference generated (like on big beam guns) and the distance from the source. Shield impacts could be said to generate EM interference as well.
Yeah... EM interference patterns would at best be picked up as random static I'd imagine. Edit: o wait, you mean like a computer interprets the EM interference. Well, you've got to have a human-grade FFT algorithm in there to separate out all the patterns, I think.
What's wrong with a situational awareness system? It's about the only explanation that actually makes sense. (though, subluminal lasers and such means that sense doesn't matter)
Can't we combine the two? We could combine EM interference and doppler velocity data (i.e. radar). (BTW, for some examples of "sounds" from our sun based on doppler velocity: http://soi.stanford.edu/results/sounds.html )
This doesn't really explain missile whoosh-by sounds and projectile sounds (i.e. machine guns). Missiles... MAYBE, if the radar has a high enough resolution for an object that has a frontal area no smaller than 10cm or so, but definitely not bullets.
Sure it does! Remember, we're over 300 years in the future. It's conceivable that they could have radar with high enough resolution to pick up bullets.
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Or ladar, even.
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Sure it does! Remember, we're over 300 years in the future. It's conceivable that they could have radar with high enough resolution to pick up bullets.
Infrared search and track would be simpler and possible with modern technology. Hell, you could do it optical if you really wanted.
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This is science fiction though. They're not going to do things the easy and simple way.
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This is science fiction though. They're not going to do things the easy and simple way.
Well, IMO, 'good' science fiction should do things the easy and simple way.
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Theoretically, if you had a weapon powerful enough to cause ripples and vibrations in the space-time continuum itself, then you could get 'sound' to propogate across space, as the vibrations would cascade along space, to any ships nearby. Unfortunately, without gravity-based weaponry, or something analogous, I really don't see this happening on any weapon, short of something on par with a gamma-ray burst, or perhaps larger. It might spontaneously tear holes through space-time and make everything in the region flash to plasma.
The Sathanas' subspace (weapon?) thing at Capella might have done it, but we will never really know.
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Gravity waves are insanely weak because gravity is a stupidly weak force, and I dunno where this 'holes in spacetime' thing lines up with real physics per se.
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Whoah, come on people. You have ships here moving at 20m/s, you have friction in empty space! Sound is the least of FS' "physics" problems! This is a fun game, but don't even try to explain this ridiculous gameplay into some form of technobabble.
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technobabble.
....
technobabble.
.......
technobabble.
But.... technobabble rules man!
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20 m/s is part of the subspace drive deal... they are intrinsically linked with the subspace aether which "anchors" the ships to the other dimension, making them behave as if they were "flying" in .... water. lolz. w/e Yes it's stupid. But so are space-faring vessels that travel slower than a 4-cylinder ecobox.
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That would explain why every laser in the game makes the same sound when it blows past.
That or the Dev's where lazy and didn't want to make a different laser whoosh for each weapon type. :P
It's currently not even possible to set different flyby sounds for primary weapons :(
It's been requested but no coder seems interested.
Oh noes. :(
Well, having a unique flyby sound per primary weapon would require some provisions for the sound equipment to identify which primary the projectile belongs to. If you had something of an Ammo.def, or ammunition definition file, you could link the sound ques to each ammo entry, including secondaries.
Second phase would be to see how the current sound system works... which could be a bear from what I've been gathering.
Sure it does! Remember, we're over 300 years in the future. It's conceivable that they could have radar with high enough resolution to pick up bullets.
Infrared search and track would be simpler and possible with modern technology. Hell, you could do it optical if you really wanted.
Remember though that the radar/lidar would also pick up the billions upon billions of meteorites and other assorted space junk. Having a high-speed (>200m/s) meteorite would sound just like a bullet, but you would not only have to consider resolution but also the computing power of the shipboard control system.
Not to mention the range of the bugger. :P
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Remember though that the radar/lidar would also pick up the billions upon billions of meteorites and other assorted space junk. Having a high-speed (>200m/s) meteorite would sound just like a bullet, but you would not only have to consider resolution but also the computing power of the shipboard control system.
You vastly overestimate the density of matter in interplanetary space.
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I didn't see this brought up so...
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...so what about in a nebula?
It is basically dust and gas, right?
How well would sound travel through that?
edit: actually, according to http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art29542.asp nebulae aren't good mediums for sound propagation :-\
edit again: I had an epiphany just now. Instead of a stupid microphone/supersonic ear/hypersonic ear/awizarddidit/Tyrian 2000's Mega Sound Chair (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpaceIsNoisy)/BECUZITSOUNDZGEWD, there is a device which scans an area for, oh, I dunno how far, uh.. ... this:
(http://i54.tinypic.com/2zecm01.png)
I call it the fridge logic sound in space detector because I don't think anything like this could really work at all. :)
Also, the broken line behind the red dot is where the sensor wave either has reduced efficiency or cannot scan at all because, well, it hit something.
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Sound in space. The ship interpreting situational awareness makes sense, but lets remember, FreeSpace ignores physics. Since we decelerate when we stop throttling our engines, which doesn't make sense in space
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Sound in space. The ship interpreting situational awareness makes sense, but lets remember, FreeSpace ignores physics. Since we decelerate when we stop throttling our engines, which doesn't make sense in space
Throttling down engines in space could also mean applying the brakes. "Sliding" is when the stabilizer thrusters are disengaged and you just go in the vector you where previously going.
Remember though that the radar/lidar would also pick up the billions upon billions of meteorites and other assorted space junk. Having a high-speed (>200m/s) meteorite would sound just like a bullet, but you would not only have to consider resolution but also the computing power of the shipboard control system.
You vastly overestimate the density of matter in interplanetary space.
I'm talking asteroid fields and planetary orbits, here. :p
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on the point of EM(or whatever) interference with the comms array IIRC we are talking about a subspace and not a radio based array so rule of cool applies here.
for the following see the above explanation
Beam cannons
Energy cannons
Blob Cannons
Warp in/out
Explosions
the following can use the attached explanations
Missile flyby - Missile exhaust hitting the fighter hull/shields, in the case of shields the sound can either be conducted through a trapped medium such as air between the fighter and the shield boundary or could be as a a result of a corresponding disruption in the shield generating hardware within the fighter.
Ships - Engine exhaust, as with missiles
Bullets - errrr... only the maxim and avenger fall into this category in FS and the maxim is described as an energy weapon, as for the avenger i'm going to blame accelerator coils.
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Mm.. actually I think Beam Cannons are more or less feasibly possible. Technically all lasers cannons are beam cannons, yet you are not likely to see them. However a particle cannon
practically doesn't give a crap what color it is depends on what you use in it for its color, I think, so I simply assume all beam cannons in FS are a form of really advanced high powered particle cannon that can be sustained for a really long time.
I really do believe that humanity may see particle beams used as weapons in the future.. but none of us personally will see it :)
As for a low-energy example of a Particle Beam, look at any activated cathode ray tube.
As for Blob cannons... :nono:.
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As for Blob cannons... :nono:.
I HATE BLOBS, THEY SUCK
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As for Blob cannons... :nono:.
I HATE BLOBS, THEY SUCK
You dont half feel a nube when one catches you napping especially prior to shields in FS1
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Yeah, I'll sometimes try my usual stand-still-and-eat-the-blobs routine while attacking a capital ship in the early part of FS1 or a custom campaign that doesnt' feature shields...only to realize too the late that the damn things can really hurt without said shields. :p
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THEY SUCK
Clearly, you have never run into the blobturrets of doom from PI (or BP).
Shields or no they **** you up D:
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They SUCK, the concept of the weapon.
A bubble of light.. :mad2:
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Its a bubble of PLASMA confined in a magnetic bottle...
Sure sure, all that stuff about a gun that shoots steam not working.
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Meh, haters gotta hate.
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Referring to yourself? :P
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Of course, I love hating stuff without reason.
Makes me feel a strong big man... that I am, clearly.
Now you made me remember PY.... I saw that old folder today when installing Rogues!.
Gotta play that again... I hope it's compatible with latest mvp release.
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Sure sure, all that stuff about a gun that shoots steam not working.
Actually...that's been done. Steam hoses were used to prevent boarding on early steam warships.
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Sure sure, all that stuff about a gun that shoots steam not working.
Actually...that's been done. Steam hoses were used to prevent boarding on early steam warships.
Wow, that's actually pretty damn cool.
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And pretty damn painful too, I'm sure. :p
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I saw someone light a match with steam once, so I'm sure it could easily be just as dangerous as a flamethrower.
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And pretty damn painful too, I'm sure. :p
Pretty much. High-pressure steam from a boiler will peel the skin (and everything else) right off you. It was eventually abandoned though because the hoses if damaged were equally dangerous to the ship's crew.
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Sound in space. The ship interpreting situational awareness makes sense, but lets remember, FreeSpace ignores physics. Since we decelerate when we stop throttling our engines, which doesn't make sense in space
Throttling down engines in space could also mean applying the brakes. "Sliding" is when the stabilizer thrusters are disengaged and you just go in the vector you where previously going.
Ah, I get it. So whenever you punch your afterburner, and it only lasts for a few seconds, your brakes kick in, to spare your ship from the non-existent friction of space. Now that makes a whole lot of sense.
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Now you've got it!
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Sound in space. The ship interpreting situational awareness makes sense, but lets remember, FreeSpace ignores physics. Since we decelerate when we stop throttling our engines, which doesn't make sense in space
Throttling down engines in space could also mean applying the brakes. "Sliding" is when the stabilizer thrusters are disengaged and you just go in the vector you where previously going.
Ah, I get it. So whenever you punch your afterburner, and it only lasts for a few seconds, your brakes kick in, to spare your ship from the non-existent friction of space. Now that makes a whole lot of sense.
I guess the control system depends on which game we're talking about... I think for most cases the "ideal" control system for using up all the afterburner would be to "slide" the craft in one vector only. Could be a bit tricky to implement though.
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The problem I have with slide as of now (at least as far as I have seen) is that it seems to shut all engines off. You can't apply thrust in one direction, turn on slide, and then apply thrust to change your direction of movement with slide still engaged. I suppose it IS in a sense better than in Freelancer where if you apply ANY thruster, you can magically lose a ton of speed (depending on your initial velocity), but at least it'd still let you maneuver at all.
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Known and quite relistic explaination, most people assume that it's how it works.
It's a logical and easy to implement way to enhance pilot's situational awareness, which really helps in combat.
Sound in space was explained like that in a couple of places, like Babylon 5. There's no reason it couldn't apply to FS.
aha... that even explains the cheesy sound effects shows had back in the day LOL!