Realistic Sounds in Space

KevinMillican

KevinMillican
OK - I know there aren't any sound waves in a vacuum.

However, any space game would be a lot poorer for realism and omitting good sound effects, so I'm glad that Elite Dangerous has some rich and rewarding sound effects and music.

Thinking about the realism aspect, there is a way you could have realistic 'sounds' in space, ie. your ship's computer generates them for you based on the sensors picking up heat. An explosion generates a sudden high energy random burst of radiation and your computer converts this to sound. A ship passing close-by could be detected by your sensors, perhaps interaction of the radiant energy on your own shields, and so on - you get the idea.

If this were the way sound functions in space in Elite Dangerous, there are a couple of changes that could help the immersion:
  • stars should generate high level white noise, but perhaps the ship filters this out to a high degree, unless you are close. Perhaps this filtering would be worse in the cheaper smaller ships.
  • when your sensors are switched off, you shouldn't hear anything but your own ship noise, ie. engines, thrusters, your own weapons, and impacts to your ship.
  • when your sensors are damaged, the external sounds might be distorted or missing.
  • external sounds with your shields down might sound a bit different to when they're up.
  • direct impacts to your hull of equipment should be much sharper and louder than sounds generated by the computer (I think they were in earlier versions of the game, but I think this has been toned down).
  • the 3-dimensional positioning might be much better with class A sensors to class E

Any other thoughts?
 

Faybs

Faybs
That is exactly how "sounds in space" work in ED lore - ship sensors pick up a bunch of data and convert it to sound so the pilot can be aware of it. You can see the loudspeakers if you turn your head - they're the weird circular things near the top of the pilot's seat with three holes in them. Also, if you get your canopy blown out sounds will be muted because there won't be any air in the cockpit.
 

Etherin Nor

E
Im not sure theres a lot of point in discussing the sound design, sorry. its an element that i think its fair to say is pretty locked, not to mention the fact the sound design in elite dangerous is one of its strongest features.
 

Privata

Privata
All the things you mentioned are allready in game.
it is your ship that generates your sounds and different objects like stars , nebula , planets , stations make sound.
you can even resive old soundwaves from days gone by in space
 

Captain Torus

Captain Torus
This is silly, why would you need sounds of an explosion to know there was an explosion, isn't the telemetry data sufficient? I play with the sound off and listen to music when I pay and it works well, I need not listen to the horrible computer accent. :)
 

xondk

X
KevinMillican said:
  • stars should generate high level white noise, but perhaps the ship filters this out to a high degree, unless you are close. Perhaps this filtering would be worse in the cheaper smaller ships.
  • when your sensors are switched off, you shouldn't hear anything but your own ship noise, ie. engines, thrusters, your own weapons, and impacts to your ship.
  • when your sensors are damaged, the external sounds might be distorted or missing.
  • external sounds with your shields down might sound a bit different to when they're up.
  • direct impacts to your hull of equipment should be much sharper and louder than sounds generated by the computer (I think they were in earlier versions of the game, but I think this has been toned down).
  • the 3-dimensional positioning might be much better with class A sensors to class E
Click to expand...
Want to point out a few things of those highlighted

1: Stars do generate noise, though right now it is only when you are within fuel scoop range, and at least to my ears they do differ.
2: Sensors off doesn't do anything, however if you turn off life support then the sounds do change.
3: Impacts on hull actually do produce different sounds, depending on weapons, though they are faint and could be more audible, lasers make very little, cannons? a lot of noise
4: This could be quite interesting, right now sensors seem to have very little impact on anything other then resolve distance, some say gimbal weapons improve with improved sensors, dunno if this has been confirmed or not though?
 

Etherin Nor

E
fine, if we are going to entertain this then i think its important to point out, anything attached to the ship will reverberate through the ship its self and into the air in the cabin, in the form of sound.

sound is merely energy waves travelling through air, and energy can be transformed. that is to say, if something explodes next to your ship in a void it would not be audible in the void itself, but an explosion does out put energy in the form of heat and other particles etc. when this energy wave hits your ship some of this energy will be transferred into the solid structure and reverberate through into the air in the cabin, making at least some sort of audible sound, right?
 

Deleted member 94277

D
KevinMillican said:
However, any space game would be a lot poorer for realism and omitting good sound effects, so I'm glad that Elite Dangerous has some rich and rewarding sound effects and music.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, this is one the worst aspects of the game in my opinion and the most immersion-breaking feature of ED. I'd really wish that there was a "realistic sound" option that made outside noises muted - and I mean really muted, not just muffled like when LS is off.

KevinMillican said:
Thinking about the realism aspect, there is a way you could have realistic 'sounds' in space, ie. your ship's computer generates them for you based on the sensors picking up heat. An explosion generates a sudden high energy random burst of radiation and your computer converts this to sound. A ship passing close-by could be detected by your sensors, perhaps interaction of the radiant energy on your own shields, and so on - you get the idea.
Click to expand...

This is already the case lore-wise, AFAIK.

IMHO, I'd like if those sounds, since they're generated by the board computer, could be customized. This alone would be immersive enough for me (the ideal would be, as I said, a "realism" option).

EDIT:
Tacyon said:
In space noone can hear you scream, or much of anything else, is not exactly true
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From the source:

Instruments on several NASA probes including Voyager have recorded these waves and translated them into a sound that we can hear, and they are all kinds of spooky.
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Those sounds are not, in fact, what we call "sounds". They're a tranlation into audible sounds of eletromagnetic waves, they're not what you'd hear in space. You can even do a similar process at home. Or reverse the translation. Despite many articles and attempts to prove otherwise, the sounds we can hear are vibrations that require a medium to travel and since that medium is almost totally absent in the vacuum, the fact is that we cannot hear anything in the vacuum of space. You can, if you want to, replicate it at home too, to see for yourself how does sound behaves in a near vacuum.
 
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Captain Torus

Captain Torus
Tacyon said:
In space noone can hear you scream, or much of anything else, is not exactly true
Click to expand...
Of course it's true, unless you can scream in em waves or in another range of the spectrum (ie. infared, uv, light, etc. that can travel in a vacuum) Sound is caused by waves of atmospheric compression and without an atmosphere to compress there is no sound. Even a much denser atmosphere like underwater can transmit sound and whales can talk to each other over vast distances that way. What NASA did was to make sounds out of waves that are not sound waves, they did not record sounds, so in space no one can hear you scream unless you translate your scream to em waves (or radio or light) and re-transmit it.
 

IronGremlin

I
Everything about the sound in this game is phenomenal.

I'm afraid to suggest changes because I'm almost certain that my ideas would only lead to an inferior product
 

Xenomorph

Xenomorph
Captain Torus said:
so in space no one can hear you scream unless you translate your scream to em waves (or radio or light) and re-transmit it.
Click to expand...

Hmm, just wondering, if it was possible to translate your scream into em waves so they could propagate through space, and you used NASA's method to convert them back into audio, would it sound the same as it originally did?
 

Morbad

Morbad
Xenomorph said:
Hmm, just wondering, if it was possible to translate your scream into em waves so they could propagate through space, and you used NASA's method to convert them back into audio, would it sound the same as it originally did?
Click to expand...

If it's encoded and decoded the same way, it will sound the same. If not, it won't.
 
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