Sound Update (PD is now hiring! + Email!)Answered 

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Remember seeing that vid sniper posted yesterday, seeing how pd do their sound now compared to how turn10 do it and since many of you might have seen the ' sound is everything' clip from project cars as demonstration, pd kinda no let me rephrase look like amateurs recording the sounds of cars!! I still have gt 4 and dusted off my copy popped it in, then went back to both gt5 and 6, i don't have a degree in developing games or sound wise but listening to the engine sounds i was like they re-used/recycled the sound from gt4 on ps2, it sounds to me so similair,just can't help but feel they been passed by the competition, heck even driveclub has superior sounds for a non sim race title,makes you wonder where pd is putting their priority on their gt franchise for now and in the future.:boggled:
How do PD (or whoever PD contract out) record sound?

Also, the recycled sounds is a large hint towards the forthcoming sound overhaul (in GT7) being genuine - "those are ... just sound effects" quoth Kaz. The largest hint is in the form of the Red Bull and Senna cars.
 
I generally prefer a louder car it gets me in the scene. This video has probably been posted before but just in case.


Oh my, :bowdown: they nailed it, i can't say i'm a proud owner of Grant Turismo 6 after this :(.
Now i don't know what to do, i have PS3 and i recently bought PS4 so i can't afford Xbox One for the moment :(.
My only hope for the near future is Project Cars and i probably have to start saving money for Xbox One and Forza 4.

Edit.

Is Forza 4 on Xbox 360 ? If it is, i think i can afford Xbox 360.
 
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Oh my, :bowdown: they nailed it, i can't say i'm a proud owner of Grant Turismo 6 after this :(.
Now i don't know what to do, i have PS3 and i recently bought PS4 so i can't afford Xbox One for the moment :(.
My only hope for the near future is Project Cars and i probably have to start saving money for Xbox One and Forza 4.

Edit.

Is Forza 4 on Xbox 360 ? If it is, i think i can afford Xbox 360.
Yes. Forza4 is on the 360.
 
Here is an idea.

What if we send email directly to the car companies?

I'm tempted to send a complaint to BMW about the awful motor sound on following models: E93 M3 (BMW Motorsport) 2010, M3 GT (BMW Motorsport) 2011, Z4 GT3 2011 and the new M4.

And a complaint to Nissan about the awful motor sound on the Nissan GT-R Calsonic IMPUL 2008.

I'm sure there is even more cars with almost unbearable engine sounds.

Maybe the car companies would be worried about the bad reputation the cars is getting and maybe they will express their worries to Sony who will then turn to Polyphony Digital and demand that they have to sort this out as soon as possible, because this is not good advertising for the car manufacturers or Gran Turismo.

What are your thoughts on this?

Also, Kazunori Yamauchi is already admitting that they don't manage to keep up the work on sound with the rapid increase of cars, you can read it here:

http://pitstop.gran-turismo.com/en/article/634

QUOTE START And the biggest problem is that the sound recordings have not caught up to the increase in the number of cars. QUOTE END

My advice would be: So stop! This rediculous amount of cars have gotten out of controll, put the breaks on now and focus on quality rather than quantity... please.

When will enough be enough? 2000 cars? 2500 cars? 3000 cars?
Why do you want to send an complaint about the awfull motor sounds to GTR Super GT's and BMW's? I like the sounds of Z4 GT3 in GT6.
 
Ah! So I now know why don't you want the motor sounds of GT6 in BMW Z4 GT3! Is because they have an wrong sound.

I think you have misunderstood me, i want the cars to have engine sounds, but i don't want bad sound, it doesen't have to be 100% real, but at least some similarities to the real thing.
 
Plenty of games do it that way already, so there'd be little interest on my part in choosing that particular compromise over one that hasn't been tried before. Let's see what PD have chosen to do instead; I think it should be very interesting.
 
Plenty of games do it that way already, so there'd be little interest on my part in choosing that particular compromise over one that hasn't been tried before. Let's see what PD have chosen to do instead; I think it should be very interesting.

And that PD will wow us so much that our earholes will never be the same again. That's in a good way of course :D
 
And that PD will wow us so much that our earholes will never be the same again. That's in a good way of course :D
Well, I make no guarantees in that regard! From a technical standpoint, I'm fascinated nonetheless.

It'll tweak most people's ears, though, because they'll recognise it's different, somehow. That's great, because it broadens the kinds of demands people make of games, broadening the ambition of developers (and the acceptance of publishers), further broadening the range of games we get to choose from. :D
 
Johnnypenso, maybe you shouldn't read this because I'm going to allegedly be not wrong.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/gran-turismo-5-sporting-60-million-budget/1100-6239328/

Speaking to the magazine, Polyphony Digital head Kazunori Yamauchi said the budget for the game is around $60 million. That makes it among the most expensive games ever made--but not the most expensive, according to Yamauchi.
You seem to have missed the headline.
Polyphony Digital head Kazunori Yamauchi reveals next year's sprawling racing simulator cost nearly three times as much as Killzone 2.
It wasn't even out yet. Now, from GT Planet's own archives,
Gran Turismo 5 is the first full GT game to be released on the Sony PlayStation 3 console. It was released worldwide on November 24, 2010 after more than 5 years of development and a cost of more than $80 million, making it the second-most expensive game of all time as of 2010.
Then again, maybe I just thought they said $80 million...

From the video below:
70 full time employees, 80 contractors at peak production + partners all around the world that help build this game, 400 at our peak, vendors in China, Vietnam, India etc.
So that's 70 full time, 80 they bring in as needed at peak production not all through the project which could easily be for a few weeks or months, and the rest are from outsourcing around the world which could refer to anything like the entire staff of GlassEgg for example. In addition to that, Forza 4 was only 2 years after Forza 3, whereas GT5 was 5 years after GT4.

Regardless, it's clearly not 400 full-time staff for the duration of the game, they bring people in or use outsourcing as needed, which probably keeps the overall development costs as low as possible. Given the 60% shorter development time I'd hazard to guess the budget for Forza 4 was much, much lower than GT5.
Boy, are you optimistic when it doesn't come to Gran Turismo. For one thing as I posted above, contracting only saves you money when you invest in a company that's doing something you aren't, like producing metal casings when you're an electronics assembly plant. Otherwise, it's saving you time. And let's see what's being produced in Forza 4. About 200 new cars and at least six new track locations, plus the rebuilt Nurburgring which could be considered the equivalent of two to four locations itself. Let's say everyone used shortcuts to produce all that, which can't be too much because the cars all feature extensive damage modeling. Polyphony requires about six months per car and up to two years per track - who knows about the Nurb, but let's say five man months per car and a year per track for "Team 10." That's more than 80 man years of work, perhaps as much as a man century depending on how much they remade. Yeah, they probably worked a few weeks on that. ;)

As for the budget, I seem to recall that a certain car make wasn't available in F4 at launch, and when it was, it was the most expensive DLC they offered. Maybe the F4 budget wasn't all that small.

As for the sounds issue people keep mentioning, Forza is its own beast, and their sounds aren't right, so I have no clue how many unique recordings they used. In person, my real life Mk III Supra sounds like a small school bus until you start getting in the 3000 rpms and above and kick in that turbo, and I've been around a few Supras and they all sound alike. The one in Forza sounds like it's got a Borla on it, at least, all the cars do, and the only car which has these "high quality" distorted sounds is the one the camera is on. Just watch any replay featuring unmodified street cars, and yours will be roaring over a field of, dare I say it, vacuum cleaners.

Every other game has one tenth the cars that GT6 has in it, or less, and I'm not sure how many unique engines race cars use. How many unique cars in Formula 1 for instance? PD does need to step up with better car sound in all aspects for GT7, but this is one area I'd be fine with some shortcutting, unless Griffith's speculation on physical modeling oriented sound creation is realized. Otherwise you're still going to have Premium sounds and Standard sounds as in GT6. And boy, will you guys be happy about that...
 
That's funny, because Nick Wiswell said they target the worst hardware, so your dedicated audio gear should only highlight the flaws that are inherent to such a strategy (like mastering music for iPods - see here). I use semi-decent over-ear headphones, and those flaws are pretty obvious to me.

Others would say you shouldn't need that gear to get the best out of it, not that I would agree - it's like those playing games on an SD TV and complaining about the graininess in the graphics and illegibility of the HUD etc.

Remember we were talking about the exaggeration / unrealism.

I do notice some of the flaws and believe me they are very minor, and the sheer quality of sound on a good system makes you forget them rather quickly. BTW, my sound system is not high-end gear by any means; it's a a Sony component amp with HDMI going from the console to the TV, and high quality RCA jacks coming to the amp. Powerful enough for my room, and since it's a 5 speaker setup (without DD though since it doesn't except surround from external components), the highs, mids and lows are distinct and give every game that audio personality and distinction that makes it easily identifiable.

Judging a game from headphones/earphones is not doing justice at all, irrespective of what Nick Wiswell said. They optimized their game to work well with TV speakers and low-end sound devices as well. That's not to say you shouldn't enjoy the game through a proper speaker system setup.

It makes a world of difference.

Oh my, :bowdown: they nailed it, i can't say i'm a proud owner of Grant Turismo 6 after this :(.
Now i don't know what to do, i have PS3 and i recently bought PS4 so i can't afford Xbox One for the moment :(.
My only hope for the near future is Project Cars and i probably have to start saving money for Xbox One and Forza 4.

Edit.

Is Forza 4 on Xbox 360 ? If it is, i think i can afford Xbox 360.

Yes it is buddy, YES it is! X360 is very cheap these days, go out and get one.. doohh eeeth! *Van Damme*

I never liked the vacuum cleaner comparison until that Project Cars comparison...

How did anyone at PD think THAT was even close to realistic.

A very ugly thing called denial. :lol:

:lol: It's like the engine is falling apart, a dark growling and rumbling sound, it sounds like my washing machine when i don't have much clothes in it, it's awful and it sounds nothing like the real BMW Z4 GT3.

My my... what a dreadful thing to say..

:lol::lol::lol:
 
I do notice some of the flaws and believe me they are very minor, and the sheer quality of sound on a good system makes you forget them rather quickly.

I don't actually believe you. I believe my own ears. Think again about what I actually said.

BTW, my sound system is not high-end gear by any means; it's a a Sony component amp with HDMI going from the console to the TV, and high quality RCA jacks coming to the amp. Powerful enough for my room, and since it's a 5 speaker setup (without DD though since it doesn't except surround from external components), the highs, mids and lows are distinct and give every game that audio personality and distinction that makes it easily identifiable.
What? If it's not laptop speaker quality, it's not the target hardware T10 had in mind when mixing and mastering, and when showing off to higher management.

Judging a game from headphones/earphones is not doing justice at all, irrespective of what Nick Wiswell said. They optimized their game to work well with TV speakers and low-end sound devices as well. That's not to say you shouldn't enjoy the game through a proper speaker system setup.
Ah, so you really didn't understand what I said, just as I thought. Headphones have the potential to give the best signal to noise ratio overall, and my headphones in particular are actually designed to highlight flaws in recordings, so I think they are more than adequate for assessing quality.

They optimised their game to work with low end hardware only. Re-read what I wrote, and read the article I linked to, please: http://productionadvice.co.uk/mastering-for-earbuds/

It makes a world of difference.

Volume generally does, yes. There's an old joke in the recording industry that a 3 dB level difference corresponds to a doubling of the audio quality. This is why absolute level differences are carefully controlled in comparing different hardware or different media etc.

GT5 Prologue sounded breathtaking at high volumes (on actual speakers, filling a room, or headphones), especially with the better sounding cars. That's partly because of the way the sound can "breathe" on the high dynamic range settings (Small or Large Theatre), and the directional audio engine PD developed.
 

Please tell me, you've been to one of the FIA GT1 races; before it became Blancpain Sprint Series, and got to hear it in person! It sounds sooooo much better in person....at Silverstone.......in the Grandstands! I miss GT1 at Silverstone. Damn, I had such high hopes for that car in GT6, only to hear it sound like that. What a punch in the groin, man!
 
Please tell me, you've been to one of the FIA GT1 races; before it became Blancpain Sprint Series, and got to hear it in person! It sounds sooooo much better in person....at Silverstone.......in the Grandstands! I miss GT1 at Silverstone. Damn, I had such high hopes for that car in GT6, only to hear it sound like that. What a punch in the groin, man!

Unfortunately i haven't been to races like that, we don't have GT3 races here in Norway, the only race i have watch live is rallycross on Lyngåsbanen in the 80s when Martin Schanke was driving.
But i sure would love to see GT3 cars live.
It's a shame that PD can't capture the sound of those cars.
 
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