All of these Engine sounds are great for those racing games, even FM4!!! The cars’ startups and chimes from Autovista are recorded from real time and they DO really show some character!
How impressive Turn 10 did back in their old days, I wish the same old Turn 10 who worked on FM4 actually work on FM23 so it’ll be actually Built from the ground up unlike what happened now.
Therefore, I want to share some Top 20 best sounding cars from GT7. Maybe if FM will be a great game again, then that and GT7 will be a win-win.
GT has incredible cockpit startup and revving sounds in showroom but when you actually start driving, you can tell that they cheaped out with lower sample and compressed audio, with revving sounds especially not the same.
I don’t understand why you can’t have the highest quality audio IN the game while driving. So what if it jacks up the game size ? I really can’t tolerate excuses anymore to be honest it’s 2024 and car games really should be sounding practically as good as the real thing.
Hmm, I can agree. Even if they sound the best, the quality is a little compressed. But I would or wouldn’t care less about audio compressions as I know that it still sounds better than previous GTs from the PS1, PS2 and PS3 titles.
Well, those engine sounds in GT7 were originally from GT Sport. They sound accurate, but I think the audio in there is much a little higher than GT7 so I guess they kind of lowered the quality to -5%. I’m gonna wish that in the future when GT8 is announced, I’d hope it’ll get those higher quality car sounds back as possible.
Yeah, I understand that, synthesis is needed in sound design, but the program they ran the RPM through produced some odd rev ranges. A lot of cars revved higher than what they should have. It wasn’t like FM4 were they were closer in the ball park even if the sounds had way more dynamic resolution in FH4. I agree granular synthesis was a good method, because you could hear the engine beating (low frequency engine vibrations) under hard acceleration. They gave too much freedom to the program though. They could have captured more than one engine rotation from the runway recording to insure more fidelity. Also, I think they mixed the engine microphones with the exhaust microphones which sounded dreadful in chase cam. Exhaust and intake should be the only mics used in post production.
Typically how I understand it, there’s a real recording that goes into a synthesizer (GT7), I have to look it back up to understand why, but it works.
FH5 and FM2023 have to be using a similar method, but FM2023 sounds like there was no field recording. The sounds sound like they were done all in house like AC.
At this point, the Youtube method is the best method, T10 either don’t want to swallow their pride and hop on the bandwagon, or the sounds lack too much resolution. We’ll have to see once ACEvo comes out what they do. I think GT7 uses YouTube when they can record a car on the spot.
It’s a mix of recording sounds, and sound synth post production sound design. The 787b for FM4 was recorded using high pressure microphones and that turned out fine with a little DSP.
Granular Synth also produced some “thin” sounds that people commented on. It didn’t bother me but, yeah. It didn’t win the public over. Then there was the fact that it wasn’t time efficient, many cars in FH4 had place holder sounds because they wanted every car to have G synth eventually. They didn’t get it done in FH5, so due to community dissatisfaction, they left.
It sounds like FH5 got cars right that people wanted. They sound good from chase cam, which is fine. If they could get good cockpit sounds with good chase cam sounds I’d be more satisfied. It sounds like a tall order though, and people are satisfied with just the exhaust sounds, but like you said, some engines don’t get love.
Edit: the Mclaren F1 top speed run I posted above is the goal, but I’m satisfied with just smooth exhaust.
Goals:
Double edit: GT7 only uses a synthesizer for cars that they have difficulty recording or cars that don’t have sounds yet. I’m sure Forza does the same thing with cars they can’t run down a runway. It’s also noted that synthesizers have their limitations and can lead to car sounding “synthesized” due to CPU overload. Sounds like what happens with Forza:
I thought the point of granular synthesis - as I understood their explanation - was to record every single rpm in the entire rev range, which yields let’s say 7,000 tiny sound recordings for a car that revs from 1,000 rpm to 8,000 rpm. Then if you were to accelerate from 1,000 to 8,000 rpm in the game, you hear those individual sound files, or when you cruise at 4,000 rpm it repeats the 4,000 rpm sound file in a loop. You make it sound as if they took 1 rpm and synthesize that into all the other rpms. That makes no sense, because you wouldn’t have to run the car on the runway. Anyway, I am talking about these videos:
First video @ 19:00 on post-processing and 21:30 on granular engine synthesis. Obviously not all cars get this treatment, it takes 2 to 3 days per car.
This guy is Fraser Strachan, who went to Maverick Games. He was working for Playground Games specifically on FH4 and FH5, and I don’t know if their work was even shared with T10 for FM. I think I saw a video where the sounds were nothing alike for a FH5 vs FM game, so maybe none of this applied to FM and they just use something crappy. Either way, with the return of Mike to T10, things should improve.
Yeah, it doesn’t sound bad. They dump the .wav file into the synthesizer, run frequency analysis, then chop it up into hundreds of sound grains representing engine rotations. The problem has to be the frequency analysis curve then, because the pitch of the cars is off.
Like with the GT7 synthesizer, I’m sure it has its limitations making cars sound synthesized when the CPU gets overloaded on more complex sounds. I don’t think they admitted that though.
Fidelity has always been a discussion in Digital vs Analog processing. The current hardware power we have right now for digital processing isn’t enough. More advancements in semi conductors are needed, we’re a long way away from Digital processing coming anywhere near analog processing.
The old analog method was just looping recorded samples? Well that’s what they did for FM6 and it worked well. That was the last good sounding Forza.
“The sound team recorded actual cars for the game, capturing intake, engine, and exhaust sounds. They used a looping model to implement car engine sounds in-game. The looping model shifts the pitch of cross-faded loops over the rev range, and was created from recordings of a car on a dyno making full-throttle runs. Vehicle recording was performed by Warner Bros. Post Production. The team used lavalier and omni mics in and around the car to capture audio, relying on high SPL mics and pre-amp attenuators for certain race cars can reach 130 dB SPL.”- From FM6’s Wikipedia page.
FM4 definitely did analog with some digital fx. There were a few cars that were probably made all in house, but analog is clearly the way. Synthesizers are hit and miss.
Edit: @Fallen4748 quoted FM4’s wiki page in a post earlier in the thread.
That was the problem. Logistics took time to get the car recorded, then post processing took too much time. They started in FH3 and 4 years later they still couldn’t finish the roster. With the growing number of cars, it just never was going to work.
I watched these videos and understood their explanation quite well but…the 2JZ was supposed to sound close to the actual car. This also applies to other cars as well. When they were using actual cars, where the actual sound is coming from, we wanted “that” sound in FH5, not the overly synthesized sound. The car sounds in FH5 is like trumpets with ridiculous amount of pops, flames, rapid bouncing of rev limiters as if its gonna break through the roof. Some cars do sound accurate(not by a large margin though) however; the overall sounds in FH5 don’t have the tone, mechanical feel and smaller details. No matter how many times I tried to adjust my ears, nope, the car sounds are just too much overly synthesized, too much electronic feel with overdone mixings, it just does not feel and sound natural. In the end I left FH5 and never looked back. The game gets so many amount of content updates and cars but at the end of the day it just feels…bland.
My personal favourites in Forza Horizon:
Meanwhile if we look at FH1, FH2 the sounds were really good and it matched with their real life counterpart. Two of my favourite horizon games tbh where contents were fun, cars had a character and emotion and map was really great and I had fun driving, cruising on the roads while listening to beats. I did not play FH3 though but I when I heard the car sounds, I was like “This might be the beginning of the downfall”.
The comparison
The Evolution of Sounds(FM1,2,3,4,6 and FH1, 2 are my personal favourites)
As you said, with the return of Mike Caviezel in T10, things should definitely improve onwards. All eyes on the larger audio initiative update.
Hmmm, I never knew this about FH5! I thought there was hope for the new team. Atleast we got Caviezel back. I wonder what he’s cooking up. I know he probably got a kick out of FM7 and FH4.
The wildest thing is that one car can sound so different across these games. I honestly couldn’t tell you which is the most accurate, I’m not really a Supra fan, so my favorite would purely be based on which sounds pleasant/exciting to me.
Also… wow, this man was with Polyphony for a little over 7 years. Can’t WAIT to see how he’s turning things around at T10. Now I’m going to go ahead and daydream about the updated P1, 918, and LaFerrari, FXX-K, etc. sounds for starters…
I noticed, and since Mike left PD to go back working with Turn 10 to save FM, it looks like Polyphony is in need of finding a new Audio lead. Since GT Sport and GT7 have good car sounds unlike their older games, I do hope this won’t affect Gran Turismo 8 and I hope the new Audio director is as good as Mike Caviezel…
Izotope may be the most popular, but they’re far from the best. Far as mastering plugins go, Melda and Eventide are unmatched. There is no better software limiter than Elevate. I’d venture to say that the reason these games sound so squashed is because of Izotope Ozone, but I could be mistaken.
