Forza Motorsport 4 - General Discussion

[Hotspitta]

Dunno, I think Shift 2 is better than FM, overall. In fact, I loved Shift 2's audio for the most part, especially the creaking suspension, debris hitting the wheel arches and such. You know, the stuff that's completely lacking in other games.

'

I dont agree i think Forza is better overall. Although i will agree on the other sound effects that Shift 2 has over FM.

 

[Bogie 19th]

Race Pro 09 sounds better than Shift 2 and FM3 to me.

 

[Pakt Sardine]

Race Pro 09 sounds better than Shift 2 and FM3 to me.

I just got Race Pro in the mail yesterday, along with my Fanatec GT2. What a brilliant little game.

Anyway, I preordered FM4 Collector's last month. I really hope the FFB is a bit stronger, but if it's the same as FM3, I won't complain too much. The game looks gorgeous.

 

[Bogie 19th]

I just got Race Pro in the mail yesterday, along with my Fanatec GT2. What a brilliant little game.

Very nice. However, good luck finding any games in the community online. In fact, Atari closed the Race Pro 09 forum too

 

[Griffith500]

The audio isn't perfect, but it's overall standard is pretty decent IMO.

To imply T10 don't care when they dyno the cars and have such a plethora of mic's around the car etc, even crashing some cars for more realistic crash audio etc is very odd indeed, if they didn't care, they'd just synth 99% of the cars and be done with it.. I agree the technical side of replay audio when the camera isn't inches from the car is it's weak point, but I'm glad their priority seems to be close field audio for when you are actually racing, I can live with some compromise in replays..

What I'm pleased about is they have stepped up the 'in-race' car audio for FM4, they have realised that people's expectations are quite far from reality, and they have discussed the licencing of audio filters that add more dynamism to the audio, giving the impression of being louder and angrier to appease people that insist on slightly OTT audio presentations.. Technically it'll be further from reality, but closer to expectations. It will be nice if they can address the replay audio to give a better rendition, but I think where FM stands out is that it's priority is in-race stuff, they don't seem too fussed about trying to compete with other games that are happy to have poor in-race elements and plough everything into the replays..

The part in bold shows you don't really comprehend the kind of effort behind that. It's far easier to entice someone over to the studios with the promise of featuring their car in the game and get recordings of it than to "synthesise" something from scratch!

I'm saying, if T10 cared about audio as much as they did everything else (autovista...), they would have improved it - this is true of most games, so I perhaps was unfair. But: "In-race" has nothing to do with it. It'll still have that irritating stepping caused by the low-res audio control scheme no matter where you're sitting; many PC games have this, too (not LFS, incidentally.)

I understand what you're saying about "expectations", but why pander to such falsities? Don't they care that it's wrong? Is this really aimed at petrolheads, with added casual friendliness, or the other way around? They should be making it sound realistic (which does not mean boring) and exceeding expectations that way; leading a revolution instead of riding on NFS' coattails. Of course, that's harder to do, so they go with the easy money, which is what I meant by getting the Bizarre Creations peeps in. It's all well and good recording fantastic samples, it's what you do with them that counts. And it's nothing really to do with real-time limitations (replays would be better than "in-race" if so), it's artistic direction (i.e. NFS copycat) and technical integration to account for that direction (i.e. low-fi audio control, no localisation reverb etc.).

And "not fussed about competing with other games"? Pull the other one, that was the primary aim of the series in the first place! I'm not going to complain about that attitude. I don't care; good for them, and doubly for us. But with Microsoft backing, T10 have the chance to do something really special, and just throwing people at it who can "do good" isn't going to get the job done without the right kind of direction and artistic / technical cohesion. Licensing that distortion solution was a smart move, but its implementation is horrid - worse than NFS Shift - so it's money that should have been spent delivering "excellence", but it has just been thrown in with apparently no real thought behind how it should be used.


Even the simplest changes could make one hell of a difference, if they weren't so seemingly keen on retaining a given workflow and precious lines of code. Doubling the rpm update rate for the audio engine would help, or supersampling the input with a low-pass filter <- so easy to do, yet so effective!

Still. It's early days yet, and I don't expect perfection, only continued improvement. Hopefully something changes before release, because I fear we're stuck in the '90s as far as sound is concerned...

(Funny, that FM3 clip sounds better than the FM4 preview; still annoying artifacts. Also, when the car is approaching the camera, the guttural-ness of the intake is lost due to the sample being pitch-shifted above its native range by the RPM level, and further shifted by the Doppler effect, because there are (near-)infra-sonic frequencies missing in the recording.)

 

[Pakt Sardine]

Very nice. However, good luck finding any games in the community online. In fact, Atari closed the Race Pro 09 forum too

I heard. It's okay though, as I don't have the wireless adapter on my 360, and my set up is far from my modem. I'll just have to enjoy the single player as much as I can. I can see, however, that the online community for it would be fantastic.

 

[VXR]

It's very, very arcade, but the sounds in NFSHP are the best I've heard.

 

[t.o.]

I heard. It's okay though, as I don't have the wireless adapter on my 360, and my set up is far from my modem. I'll just have to enjoy the single player as much as I can. I can see, however, that the online community for it would be fantastic.

Can you check something out for me when you get into Race Pro? It seems the AI is harder on those champion single race runs than on the career even at the same difficulty.

 

[HELLAFLUSH240SX]

Do you guys play Race Pro on Xbox?
I've been having that game for the longest, I haven't tried online yet.
Is it any good?

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

The part in bold shows you don't really comprehend the kind of effort behind that. It's far easier to entice someone over to the studios with the promise of featuring their car in the game and get recordings of it than to "synthesise" something from scratch!

I'm saying, if T10 cared about audio as much as they did everything else (autovista...), they would have improved it - this is true of most games, so I perhaps was unfair. But: "In-race" has nothing to do with it. It'll still have that irritating stepping caused by the low-res audio control scheme no matter where you're sitting; many PC games have this, too (not LFS, incidentally.)

I understand what you're saying about "expectations", but why pander to such falsities? Don't they care that it's wrong? Is this really aimed at petrolheads, with added casual friendliness, or the other way around? They should be making it sound realistic (which does not mean boring) and exceeding expectations that way; leading a revolution instead of riding on NFS' coattails. Of course, that's harder to do, so they go with the easy money, which is what I meant by getting the Bizarre Creations peeps in. It's all well and good recording fantastic samples, it's what you do with them that counts. And it's nothing really to do with real-time limitations (replays would be better than "in-race" if so), it's artistic direction (i.e. NFS copycat) and technical integration to account for that direction (i.e. low-fi audio control, no localisation reverb etc.).

And "not fussed about competing with other games"? Pull the other one, that was the primary aim of the series in the first place! I'm not going to complain about that attitude. I don't care; good for them, and doubly for us. But with Microsoft backing, T10 have the chance to do something really special, and just throwing people at it who can "do good" isn't going to get the job done without the right kind of direction and artistic / technical cohesion. Licensing that distortion solution was a smart move, but its implementation is horrid - worse than NFS Shift - so it's money that should have been spent delivering "excellence", but it has just been thrown in with apparently no real thought behind how it should be used.


Even the simplest changes could make one hell of a difference, if they weren't so seemingly keen on retaining a given workflow and precious lines of code. Doubling the rpm update rate for the audio engine would help, or supersampling the input with a low-pass filter <- so easy to do, yet so effective!

Still. It's early days yet, and I don't expect perfection, only continued improvement. Hopefully something changes before release, because I fear we're stuck in the '90s as far as sound is concerned...

(Funny, that FM3 clip sounds better than the FM4 preview; still annoying artifacts. Also, when the car is approaching the camera, the guttural-ness of the intake is lost due to the sample being pitch-shifted above its native range by the RPM level, and further shifted by the Doppler effect, because there are (near-)infra-sonic frequencies missing in the recording.)

If you're not too busy, can you explain these points a bit more? I'm eager to learn about this stuff, but I'm not really sure where to start.

 

[t.o.]

Do you guys play Race Pro on Xbox?
I've been having that game for the longest, I haven't tried online yet.
Is it any good?

Race Pro is only available on the 360. Online is a ghost town so forget it. If we all decide to meet up though it would be fun. It has a pretty solid online structure. There is some quirk about how to join or whatever. It's a nice game. I'm glad I got it even though it was a bit late in the game when I did get it.

Here's a vid I made of one race. Remember , graphics isn't it's strong suit.

 

[zr1chris]

Race Pro is only available on the 360. Online is a ghost town so forget it. If we all decide to meet up though it would be fun. It has a pretty solid online structure. There is some quirk about how to join or whatever. It's a nice game. I'm glad I got it even though it was a bit late in the game when I did get it.

Here's a vid I made of one race. Remember , graphics isn't it's strong suit.

Im really impressed by the A.I. First place raced you hard and clean by the looks of it.

 

[HELLAFLUSH240SX]

Race Pro has some wierd graphics in terms of shadows, the cars look wet almost.
But I love the AI, they really do race! Not just let you by

 

[t.o.]

Im really impressed by the A.I. First place raced you hard and clean by the looks of it.

Oh yeah, even though I wasn't looking like Mario Andretti out there I definitely had to keep my F'ups to a minimum or they will take advantage.

Race Pro has some wierd graphics in terms of shadows, the cars look wet almost.
But I love the AI, they really do race! Not just let you by

This game has a problem displaying the color white for some reason , also it throws a metallic look on the sides of the car and thereby there is no white on the sides. Like I said, graphics is NOT this game's strong suit but the action is.

EDIT: Although the game does have a cockpit view (which, of course, is what I use) you can't see it in replays. Bummer.

You'll like this, not my video.

 

[Machate-man]

Who still wants Fujimi Kaido?

 

[HELLAFLUSH240SX]

I'll take it, with a better FALL theme, and more pink flowers....

 

[phil-t]

editied.. too inflammatory, and not enough substance..

 

[Pakt Sardine]

Can you check something out for me when you get into Race Pro? It seems the AI is harder on those champion single race runs than on the career even at the same difficulty.

Sorry for how late this is, but I do believe the AI is somewhat harder on Championship Mode rather than Career. I think that's because Career mode has dynamic AI as you progress. I could be wrong, because I've only had the game for a day, and I haven't tinkered around too much with it. Although from what I've seen, Career's AI -- so far -- is extremely easy, but I tried Championship mode on Hard, and I was just able to keep up with the AI.

Who still wants Fujimi Kaido?

Absolutely. I was just messing around on that track earlier. Such a joyous run.

 

[Mr Latte]

So anyone want to just talk about the game and not the finer details on things like audio from a video.

Guys the least thing you could do is wait to the game is released and then go into depth about the audio. Cars are not going to be 100% accurate, through all the revs and gears. Anyone thinking they might be and have amazing dynamics or audio perfection is perhaps a little hopeful. Those that care about their audio so much then well why not consider what I will be doing with my cockpit and have full 31-band EQ from 20Hz - 20KHz on all 7 channels with upto -12 to +12 db available. Their are things that can be done on the end users hardware to change or modify the audio more to your liking.

What does matter though is how the audio in FM4 compares or improves on past releases or other games.
GT5 had very mixed results with its car sounds. Shift 2 may go more for atmosphere than accuracy. Different developers tend to do different things but please remember these are games for entertainment.

 

[Griffith500]

If you're not too busy, can you explain these points a bit more? I'm eager to learn about this stuff, but I'm not really sure where to start.

Most game audio engines are event-based, so something happens in the game and a "message" is sent to start a sound, e.g. a gunshot etc. Most sounds are "one-shots" like this.

Some sounds, especially ambience and music, or the engine sound from a car, are continually streamed / looped from memory, and their positions need to be updated in real time. For cars, you need to update rpm and throttle position, too, for sample blending and pitch shifting purposes.
That's what control data is, it's the "messages" that tell the audio engine how loud to play a given "stream", and where to locate it in the soundscape, etc.

Bearing in mind that audio is typically 44 kHz (in order to properly render audio frequencies up to 22 kHz, the usually quoted limit of human hearing - see Nyquist sampling theorem), and that cars move quite quickly, and can also potentially rev quite quickly (e.g. during gear changes), you're going to need to update those things relatively quickly in order to avoid artifacts like the sound output lagging behind what the actual car is doing and / or obvious "staircasing" in the control input etc. You can hear this in most PC racing games, especially if the computer can barely run it. It sort of sounds like an arpeggio instead of a smooth slur / slide, for a tenuous musical analogy.

In my experiments, you need to go well below 16 milliseconds (~ 63Hz) to get smooth inputs (I had to supersample up to audio rate, with linear interpolation and low-pass filters - trivial with today's DSP packages), but GT5-style fly-bys need even faster control rates. Unfortunately, that was as fast as I could get it with that particular game because the info was being sent over TCP!

Going back over some videos, I think I prefer the audio design in Forza 2. Maybe T10 are heavily penalised by the DVD format? I've said this before, elsewhere, but FM3 seemingly had to compromise its sounds to account for the lack of "customisation", so that every car had to at once retain its stock, recognisable character, but also be meaty enough to be acceptable as "fully tuned".

@Mr. Latte: Why should people have to buy something to make the sounds better, it should sound that good no matter the hardware! (Sorry, I couldn't resist.) My main gripe is that audio is lagging behind everything else in game development (except, maybe, story, characters etc.) Graphics improve year on year, but the underlying techniques for audio haven't really changed.

 

[Hotspitta]

Most game audio engines are event-based, so something happens in the game and a "message" is sent to start a sound, e.g. a gunshot etc. Most sounds are "one-shots" like this.

So get too the point what game has the best car sounds too you?

 

[Mr Latte]

@Mr. Latte: Why should people have to buy something to make the sounds better, it should sound that good no matter the hardware! (Sorry, I couldn't resist.) My main gripe is that audio is lagging behind everything else in game development (except, maybe, story, characters etc.) Graphics improve year on year, but the underlying techniques for audio haven't really changed.

Well yes but I didn't say people did have to. I expressed that if sound is so important to you guys with all this OTT in-depth discussion on audio. Then their are things that can be done via hardware to alter/change to a degree what the audio in the game actually sounds like.

The vast majority of people that play this game will do so on audio systems,TV's, headphones that are far from anything like audiophile qualities. Having the best audio samples and in game sound in the world wont be much of a benefit on a tiny set of speakers or television. The point is game audio does not lack in the eyes/ears (lol) of the average consumer or console owner. Few I believe will analyse its audio in the depths you guys are discussing.

To end this on a musical note:
I feel your passion and I'm no audio engineer by any means but did once have a friend that helped develop DTS at Queens University of Belfast. They were based at the time in "Bangor", somewhere you will not likely of heard of but by coincidence is the home town of "Snow Patrol". He could of given some input to your topic.

 

[phil-t]

In my experiments, you need to go well below 16 milliseconds (~ 63Hz) to get smooth inputs (I had to supersample up to audio rate, with linear interpolation and low-pass filters - trivial with today's DSP packages), but GT5-style fly-bys need even faster control rates. Unfortunately, that was as fast as I could get it with that particular game because the info was being sent over TCP!

I would guess your supersampling/interpolation and the customary low pass filter are in response to the audio system update rate being asynchronous and at a different rate to your input sub-system. I would imagine T10 would have addressed that fundamental issue as a matter of course? Or am I reading you incorrectly?

The biggest issue I hear in FM that stands out above all else is the quantisation issue due to them presumably only being able to hold a finite number of discrete samples. Since engine note depends on RPM and Load as the main factors, they don't just use a simple single engine note that is pitch shifted for any RPM, but a set of samples according to load and some intermediary RPM values, and pitch shift from those. The reason I summise this, is you hear distinct quantisation issues when they suddenly switch from one base sample to another as a 'value' is crossed. it doesn't appear to be due to any update rate issues, just the inevitable simplistic quantisation, something that needs to be carefully blended around transitions, but can be quite processor intensive to do.
??

 

[Spagetti69]

It's like bloody DR Who around here nowadays. Lol.

 

[Mr Latte]

It's like bloody DR Who around here nowadays. Lol.

Well lets then move discussion towards what you want to discuss.
Gamescom is now only 2 weeks away. The run up to this is going to be great with the anticipation and then hopefully a big presentation and new content/news/tracks being shown.

I wonder if "Mr T" is attending Gamescom?
Im getting pumped waiting for more news on Fanatec's new toys with info on pricing and release...

 

[HBK]

Audio is mostly fine in FM3. Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but fine. Not many games can compete when you take into account the 400+ different sounding cars (bar some duplicates).

The only thing I hope is fixed is the "cracks" that can be heard when the sound processor is overloaded (seemingly).

It's bloody annoying on a high-end system.

And quite frequent on some tracks.

 

[Spagetti69]

I would imagine Gamescon is where the wheels will get shown off better.

I hope Mr T doesn't show up personally. I'd rather see Thomas the Chief exec show up and not do a parody.

The first time was funny. Now to business please Thomas.

 

[Bogie 19th]

Do you guys play Race Pro on Xbox?
I've been having that game for the longest, I haven't tried online yet.
Is it any good?

I am up for playing, though I will be extremely rusty. I see you are from Chicago. I am from Madison. I can be on anytime after 430pm tonight. My Gamertag is Soldier 95B if you want to add me.

 

[Mr Latte]

I would imagine Gamescon is where the wheels will get shown off better.

I hope Mr T doesn't show up personally. I'd rather see Thomas the Chief exec show up and not do a parody.

The first time was funny. Now to business please Thomas.

I think your right with that and some didn't see the fun side of the "Mr T" interview. To do such twice could backfire and not be as amusing.

 

[PzR Slim]

I would imagine Gamescon is where the wheels will get shown off better.

I hope Mr T doesn't show up personally. I'd rather see Thomas the Chief exec show up and not do a parody.

The first time was funny. Now to business please Thomas.

I agree, although they put a very humorous slant on the cloak and dagger stuff at E3 it's time for some real info and solid facts. People need to start thinking about the decisions they are going to make and how much money it's going to cost them.