[IvKir]

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?

[Dragon]

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.

[Mongoose]

I think "Because it's cool" works equally well as an explanation, personally.

[z64555]

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.

[Kolgena]

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.

[mjn.mixael]

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...

[z64555]

I'm sure there's been some tests on this sort of stuff, have they considered frequency shifting (instead of just just decreased volume)?

[mjn.mixael]

 

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.

[NGTM-1R]

It's your ship providing audio cues for situational awareness.

[Mars]

That would explain why every laser in the game makes the same sound when it blows past.

[lostllama]

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.

[Trivial Psychic]

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.

[Asteroth]

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.

[Kolgena]

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)

[Kopachris]

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 )

[Asteroth]

Scaled up 42,000 times. I'm not trying to knock your theory I just thought that was pretty intense.

[z64555]

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. 

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.

[Scourge of Ages]

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.

[Mongoose]

Guys, guys...it's like my freshman-year physics professor said.  "Space fights without sound are boring."

[Kolgena]

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.