Daidalos Team's Room -QUESTIONS AND REQUESTS ONLY on IL2 Authorized Addons

[ElAurens]

I have flown in a real B-25. I know what that sounds like.

It's quite simply the loudest thing I have ever experienced short of a Nitro fuel dragster, or firing an M1 Garand without hearing protection.

Neither the mod B-25 sounds or the stock are anywhere close.

If it were accurately modeled two things would happen.

1. We would all go deaf. (Most survivng B-25 crewmen are).

2. Our speakers would be destroyed in short order.

Warbirds are not quieter inside than a flyby is. They are exponentially louder. Hearing protection is an absolute necessity.

Trust me here, you do not want the sim to have realistic interior sounds. The only way you could even begin to approximate it is to have your system volume cranked to 11 on speakers, and then wear a proper real flight crew headset so you could hear the radio, etc...

[bf-110]

Talking of B-25,it would be nice to fly the earlier B-25 versions,for Pacific,North Africa and European campaigns.

BTW,El Aurens,does it sounds like this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEDt3J7E-B0

[ElAurens]

A lot like that yeah.

The microphone on the camera was clipping as it was unable to cope with the high dB levels in the cockpit.

I also rode in the left waist gunner position and it was unbearable back there as well.

I rode in the Yankee Air Museum's B-25D "Yankee Warrior". We had a 45 minute ride along the Ohio shore of Lake Erie.

[Blackdog_kt]

I think that for a totally realistic sound set we would need very a expensive sound synthesizing software suite that takes into account displacement of engine and a whole lot of manifold pressure and RPM ranges, along with propeller type/dimensions and external air conditions, then apply all that to mathematical functions that describe the properties of air waves and finally, match the results to what we know sounds like it in reality.

It could probably be done with today's computers and come very close to reproducing what the real thing sounded like. It would also probably be something as expensive and needing just as long a time to be coded as the rest of the simulator, so i guess we won't see it

As for noise levels, it depends on a lot of things. In the B-25 video you can see the hair of the guy in the back moving in the wind, so i guess the sound is louder because they are flying with the side window open. Not to say that the sound wouldn't be loud in any case, these were some huge engines and they were mostly tuned for performance, operating with unsilenced mufflers, but the effect is probably exaggerated a bit by having the window open.

Also, just like in motorbikes and cars, an air-cooled engine will have more of that "thump-thump-thump" sound (especially at lower RPM), just like the old VW beetles and air-cooled chopper bikes like the Harley models, while a liquid-cooled engine exhibits less of a "thumping growl" and more of a high pitched "whine".

Finally, the use or no use of noice cancelling headphones is another variable, but i don't know how well WW2 headphone sets were in that regard.

All in all, there's quite a lot of variables to get it right without devoting increasing amounts of time to it.

[robtek]

A usefull patch would be, regarding the previous posts, that NO external sounds are heard in the cockpit, except maybe really close heavy AAA bursts.
So, no more "sound radar" to watch one's back, only team-mates and the Mk1-Eyeball.

[LeLv8_Otto]

Originally Posted by robtek

A usefull patch would be, regarding the previous posts, that NO external sounds are heard in the cockpit, except maybe really close heavy AAA bursts.
So, no more "sound radar" to watch one's back, only team-mates and the Mk1-Eyeball.

+1000

I was about to write the same thing - not to mention that in some planes you can hear others further away than in another ... real immersion killer

Outside view sounds can be as real or fancy or whatever but inside cockpit you cannot hear anything but your own engine as descriped in this thread earlier.

[ElAurens]

Blackdog_kt, most of my flight was in the waist gunner's position, no windows open anywhere on the aircraft, and you could not hear yourself think. If I wanted to communicate with one of the other passengers in the compartment, we would have to take our ear protection off and literally scream at one another to be heard, and we were only sitting a couple feet apart. Having the side window in the cockpit slid back would not change anything.

Please don't let this become another of those topics where a simmer sitting at his computer in his comfortable envirionment "probably" knows better than someone who has actually been there and done it. We have enough of that nonsense when it comes to FM debates, don't we?

[JtD]

I'm not happy with the game sounds myself, but it is my impressions that mods just aim to provide "cooler" sounds at the expense of "more realistic" ones. It would be nice to see them improved, but if you want to do it right, it's quite a task.

[Fafnir_6]

Hello,

El Aurens, you are absolutely correct about the ambient noise levels in the cockpit. I stand by my earlier assertion that stock/modded interior sounds are all just best guesses by their respective makers (I'll amend that now to say that they are adjusted to save our hearing/speakers as well). If the modded sounds interior sounds don't bear any resenblance to the sound in the video, what is to stop the sound maker from dropping the gain of the sound in the video (or perhaps make a new recording with a very low-gain microphone/recording system since B-25s are still flying) and adjusting his/her in game interior sound for a given plane to match the recorded sound to the best of his/her ability. Surely this would be the closest we could get to proper interior sounds. There are many warbirds still flying that we could potentially get a low gain recording system in for a flight. I'll look into what recording system would be best for this (this need not be prohibitively expensive, I think).

As for exterior sounds, the mods have it right. I have heard Spitfires fly in RL and the stock sounds bare no resemblance to the real thing. The same goes for P-51s, Bf109s and other still flyable warbirds.

If replacing the interior sounds is untenable (I don't think it is when you have youtube cockpit vids and if we could make special recordings) then perhaps just the exterior sounds could be replaced since these are much easier to record and get very accurate.

@robtek: While you are correct that you shouldn't be able hear anything other than your own engine/guns in cockpit, it is still worthwhile to overhaul the exterior sounds for offliners such as myself who like to watch other planes fly around/fight during a long flight.

Cheers,

Fafnir_6

[MD_Titus]

Originally Posted by Fafnir_6

Hello all,

I am wondering if DT would consider working with some of the sound mod makers out there (Jafa, Tiger33, et al) to replace the sounds of stock IL-2 in some future patch. If not, what are the issues that would impede such a cooperative effort?

The sounds of IL-2 have always been the sim's weakest spot (I think most users would agree after using one of the sound mods out there). The impact of better sounds is significant in terms of immersion and would contribute greatly to the simming experience of all IL-2 users with no performance hit. Heck, even Jane's World War II Fighters from 1998 had infinitely better sounds than stock IL-2 has today.

Cheers,

Fafnir_6

tbh, i use the stock sounds in game, rather than the sound mods. some are good, like the whistle tone of the 109, but some are just so awful it ruins it. the canned hit sounds for one. and whilst the mods sound good on flypast, i cannot help but think they are using up resources for things that you simply would not be able to pick out over the headphones, RT and general roar of being in a cockpit. essentially they are superfluous.

Originally Posted by JtD

I'm not happy with the game sounds myself, but it is my impressions that mods just aim to provide "cooler" sounds at the expense of "more realistic" ones. It would be nice to see them improved, but if you want to do it right, it's quite a task.

i'd agree with that. it would be an immense task to improve and maintain the same standard across the board that *some* of the sounds mods have added.

almost SoW proportioned in fact.

which begs the further question - would the effort be wasted?