Speed-Of-Sound Delay

[Corona688]

Hear me out -- this is not about pointless realism.  There's situations in KSP where the sound is rather poor:

1. Violent splashdowns.  We've all heard that weird echo chamber that happens when 19 parts splashdown near-simultaneously.
2. Large takeoffs.  Igniting twelve engines simultaneously doesn't sound like twelve engines, it sounds like one big one plus an echo effect.
3. Complicated staging.  Twelve decouplers don't sound like twelve decouplers, just one big one.
4. Violent impacts.  Ditto.

You get the idea.  There's lots of situations where KSP piles on 7 identical sounds to poor effect.  Variation needs to be thrown in somehow.

I propose playing sound effects for sources far from the camera POV a touch later than sources nearby.  Not for realism's sake - if anything, an exaggerated effect might sound better.  Just to break those awful echo effects up into distinct sounds.  Imagine a splashdown that sounds like several impacts, twelve decouplers detaching with a z-z-z-z-zip, jet engines winding up with that high-pitched resonance...  Stuff like that.

[Helmetman]

Supported  

It didn't cover what your suggesting...

But in a ancient KSP era there was once this (v) don't necro this!

I would like that and including the ideas of yours. 
Personally I play without sounds and just play my tracks. But that is because KSP sounds suck like a deflating hydrogen balloon.
If it weren't I'd be pretty interested in playing the in game sounds.

Edited November 24, 2017 by Helmetman

[KSK]

Sound design in general is one area where I think KSP could use a lot of extra love. It would be nice, for example if spacecraft sounds in space were only audible from IVA.

Admittedly that's a bit niche but all the examples that @Corona688 pointed out are a bit underwhelming too. Just the ordinary engine noises for example - these are rockets for goodness sake. Even with a certain amount of creative license (to fit in with the depicted quirkiness of Kerbal rockets), they should be noisy, they should be dramatic, they should sound like the cutting edge machines that they are. (And it really shouldn't be hard to get hold of a couple of decent recordings of real rocket launches to help the sound designers).

Instead KSP rockets sound like Jeb blowing an extended raspberry all the way to orbit.

[Piatzin]

2 hours ago, KSK said:

Instead KSP rockets sound like Jeb blowing an extended raspberry all the way to orbit.

This made my day

I also agree that sound could be improved

Edited November 24, 2017 by Earthlinger

[Corona688]

 

@KSK remember, this isn't about making KSP more realistic!  It's about making it more awesome.    People depend on map view sound, knowingly or not.  (...Did I just run out of fuel? *revert*)

I fully support the idea of better sounds in general!  I don't think its as easy as it seems though.  I've taken a few cracks at it, but just try and find a good, clean recording of a rocket engine test that isn't saturated, and isn't full of rushing wind, scattering debris, or alarms.  If I try again, I'll start small - the Ant sound especially bugs me, it sounds like a crappy bearing.

Part of that "raspberry all the way to orbit" sound is unintended resonance, I'm pretty sure, from running the same 7 sounds in a loop on top of each other.

Edited November 24, 2017 by Corona688

[KSK]

On 11/24/2017 at 4:10 PM, Corona688 said:

@KSK remember, this isn't about making KSP more realistic!  It's about making it more awesome.    People depend on map view sound, knowingly or not.  (...Did I just run out of fuel? *revert*)

I fully support the idea of better sounds in general!  I don't think its as easy as it seems though.  I've taken a few cracks at it, but just try and find a good, clean recording of a rocket engine test that isn't saturated, and isn't full of rushing wind, scattering debris, or alarms.  If I try again, I'll start small - the Ant sound especially bugs me, it sounds like a crappy bearing.

Part of that "raspberry all the way to orbit" sound is unintended resonance, I'm pretty sure, from running the same 7 sounds in a loop on top of each other.

With luck the two could go together in this case, although I agree that better visual cues would be needed in the map view if sounds weren't available. I was thinking the same thing about deploying landing legs - that creaking, groaning sound that's used at the moment isn't so great and I think just having the legs silently unfolding in the vacuum would be much more awesome. But some kind of indicator light on the leg hinge which lights up when the leg is moving, or when the command to deploy takes effect. Something to let you know immediately that your button press has worked.

[Corona688]

What if you only heard sounds with live cockpits, not probe cores?

[KSK]

20 minutes ago, Corona688 said:

What if you only heard sounds with live cockpits, not probe cores?

Hmmm. That's a good idea. With a live cockpit you're just hearing all the noises that your crew hears. With a probe core you get that whole silence of deep space aesthetic going on. Yep - I like that!

[EnderKid2]

What if they did the sounds like in Space Engineers. You hear all sounds your command pod is connected to, so you hear sounds on your ship as less muffled the closer they are to the command pod. A big rocket would have very muffled engine noises, while a small rocket would be louder. You would not hear anything not connected to your command pod, but if you are landed and something crashes near you, you will hear it. Of course all this does not apply in-atmosphere.

[pizzaoverhead]

On 11/23/2017 at 8:50 PM, Corona688 said:

Hear me out -- this is not about pointless realism.  There's situations in KSP where the sound is rather poor:

1. Violent splashdowns.  We've all heard that weird echo chamber that happens when 19 parts splashdown near-simultaneously.
2. Large takeoffs.  Igniting twelve engines simultaneously doesn't sound like twelve engines, it sounds like one big one plus an echo effect.
3. Complicated staging.  Twelve decouplers don't sound like twelve decouplers, just one big one.
4. Violent impacts.  Ditto.

You get the idea.  There's lots of situations where KSP piles on 7 identical sounds to poor effect.  Variation needs to be thrown in somehow.

I propose playing sound effects for sources far from the camera POV a touch later than sources nearby.  Not for realism's sake - if anything, an exaggerated effect might sound better.  Just to break those awful echo effects up into distinct sounds.  Imagine a splashdown that sounds like several impacts, twelve decouplers detaching with a z-z-z-z-zip, jet engines winding up with that high-pitched resonance...  Stuff like that.

Delaying the sounds only gets you more of the weird echo effect. (For the actual speed of sound realism, bahamutod's Camera Tools give a good example of what you can do for sound realism.) The only way around this is more sound diversity. You can add multiple samples for each sound and randomly select which one is played, at the cost of (a small amount of) extra memory for each sounds, or you can fake it by slightly changing the pitch of the sound randomly each time it's played. Wheel Sounds uses this for the tyre squeak of aircraft touching down, and Minecraft uses it for all its sound effects for example.

On 11/25/2017 at 7:52 PM, Corona688 said:

What if you only heard sounds with live cockpits, not probe cores?

On 11/25/2017 at 8:14 PM, KSK said:

Hmmm. That's a good idea. With a live cockpit you're just hearing all the noises that your crew hears. With a probe core you get that whole silence of deep space aesthetic going on. Yep - I like that!

On 11/26/2017 at 5:01 AM, EnderKid2 said:

What if they did the sounds like in Space Engineers. You hear all sounds your command pod is connected to, so you hear sounds on your ship as less muffled the closer they are to the command pod. A big rocket would have very muffled engine noises, while a small rocket would be louder. You would not hear anything not connected to your command pod, but if you are landed and something crashes near you, you will hear it. Of course all this does not apply in-atmosphere.

Check out Audio Muffler. It fades out the sound realistically as you leave atmosphere. Atmospheric Sound Enhancement did this too originally, with dulled or no sound in external space views, and only muffled external sounds heard from inside.

 

 

 

[Corona688]

28 minutes ago, pizzaoverhead said:

You can add multiple samples for each sound and randomly select which one is played

You can?  How?  As I've been doing audio modding anyway...

[pizzaoverhead]

13 minutes ago, Corona688 said:

You can?  How?  As I've been doing audio modding anyway...

In a sound plugin, you would have multiple AudioClips, then select and assign the one to your AudioSource just before you play it.

[Corona688]

21 minutes ago, pizzaoverhead said:

In a sound plugin, you would have multiple AudioClips, then select and assign the one to your AudioSource just before you play it.

So, you actually can't, someone needs to invent it?

Edited December 1, 2017 by Corona688

[pizzaoverhead]

30 minutes ago, Corona688 said:

So, you actually can't, someone needs to invent it?

I already have done. Collision FX changes its sound effects depending on what surface the craft is sliding along for instance.

[Shadowmage]

45 minutes ago, Corona688 said:

So, you actually can't, someone needs to invent it?

I would not say that writing a simple plugin to manipulate already available variables and data is equivalent to 'inventing' something.  Not even close.

Edit:  If you changed 'invent' to 'develop' or 'implement'.... then there is no problem with the original statement.

Edited December 1, 2017 by Shadowmage

[Corona688]

16 minutes ago, pizzaoverhead said:

I already have done. Collision FX changes its sound effects depending on what surface the craft is sliding along for instance.

I've seen your mod before and always considered it interesting.  I am not trying to insult mods, just clumsily asking if it's a feature of the game engine or an extension of it.

16 minutes ago, pizzaoverhead said:

The only way around this is more sound diversity.

I see your point and agree.  A delay/echo might actually sound good when firing 12 decouplers, which is the one time we don't of course.

I've got my own sound mod going on, just sticking to config-level modding since that seems the least likely to break in the long term:

 

10 minutes ago, Shadowmage said:

Edit:  If you changed 'invent' to 'develop' or 'implement'.... then there is no problem with the original statement.

Sorry, I wasn't trying to be negative.  I just wanted to know if it was a game engine feature or a game engine extension.