Bionic ears

[lure]

hm.. just thought that if you use some 5.1 speakers/headphones and turn down volume for one of the directions you could probably "filter out" the engine noise from your own aircraft by selecting a view that put the turned down speaker/direction towards the engine.

I'm too bored with the game a.t.m. to bother trying this but if someone play around with SVM and 5.1/7.1 sound I bet you could produce your own bionic ears effect.

I bet the cause of bionic ears is the fact that the engine sound have a "location" in the game world that change direction and distance as you pan your view around. Moving the engine sound from a "3D" sound effect to some kind of ambient background sound would probably also cure the bug.

[doninja]

Apart from those who get this symptom by acident , it is really a sad reflection on the community that people would go out of their way to get or enhance Bionic ears or equivelant to unfairly enahnce themselves in a game with no win/lose consequences.

Good luck to them just means everything they do in game to gain stats means diddly and hope they don't meet somone in RL who tries to turn the system on them, or maybe it is inevitable.

[lure]

Apart from those who get this symptom by acident , it is really a sad reflection on the community that people would go out of their way to get or enhance Bionic ears or equivelant to unfairly enahnce themselves in a game with no win/lose consequences.

Good luck to them just means everything they do in game to gain stats means diddly and hope they don't meet somone in RL who tries to turn the system on them, or maybe it is inevitable.

The problem is that so many are getting this bug without doing ANYTHING special. And there MUST be people out there that have figured out what triggers it. The combined number of pilots with this bug makes bionic ears the norm and IMO if someone finds out how to trigger this bug it should be made public so everyone can choose if they want to use it or not.

[dkamerad]

Upgraded my sound card, enabled 5.1 Surround sound. Got bionic ears (full engine mute) FFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUU

[DOC]

If you run 5.1 sound, then you could choose software instead of hardware in settings (sound system) and while the sounds in the game (overall, as a package) would be inferior to choosing hardware ... you'd also be "turning bionic ears on" as it were.

The sound system choices are meant to be employed:

Hardware => 5.1 sound or better

Software => plain vanilla stero sound (ie: not 5.1 or better surround sound)

Really, our sound engine is old and archaic, when it was created 5.1 sound did not even exist. All we had to go on then was plain old 2 speaker stereo, and available sound drivers was an even smaller variety of technology choices. Since then "sound" as a game environment has exploded in terms of technology and more than that, methods and derivitives of implementation.

To that end, we are currently examining what our best choice is regarding the sweeping change required to address the wide array of issues (it's not a single simple problem) and yet still be forced to use the same game client we have now, a new one is not an option naturally, although it does make a nice dreamland-imagination-can-do-anything-you-could-type-on-the-page wishing excercise, no doubt there.

We will have a choice made soon and then we'll go ahead and implement it, primary goal being to isolate the ability to select something unintentional (our intention) and disable it.

The precise means by which we can do that best (resources/technology/reality) are not yet decided, but they will be. We are not ignoring this.

[sbuzzard]

Wonderful news.

FYI I am using onboard sound with an Asus P6T and headphones and no longer have the sound bug since updating my entire system. Not sure what triggers it but am relieved to know it is being looked in to.

[AHWULF]

^^^^ What DOC said. The ideal options are FMOD and Miles which are designed for 3d Game sound (both Mac and PC) and did not exist when WW2OL was written.

Both OpenAL and DirectX sound are feeble in different ways. To be fair, they also provide less functionality than the commercial alternatives.

[eigenman]

Great news DOC. Glad this is now a high priority.

[Zannik]

ROFLMAO ive never flew a stuka in ww2 or did i fly a havoc either,so from a non experienced position (arm chair expert) are you trying to tell me that they had their heads out the window listening for trucks and tanks over a big noisy engine/'s

lol ok you got me

I would think (dont know) a hurricane or something in RL if flown low enough and at low RPM's could hear a opel.They didn't obviously because they weren't that low,but that doesn't mean it should be impossible ingame.That problem would be forcing aircraft higher which is for a different discussion.

If they couldn't here it though then they shouldn't here it ingame.Im a ground nub and dont really know

[thief]

Wow. It's been over a year now...

[rubbish]

Thief you're unlikely to get much movement on this unless you at least take the time to describe the problem in detail.

When does it occur and to what extent?

What planes does it affect?

What hardware / settings allow for it?

etc.

[thief]

Thief you're unlikely to get much movement on this unless you at least take the time to describe the problem in detail.

When does it occur and to what extent?

What planes does it affect?

What hardware / settings allow for it?

etc.

As I have said earlier, I don't have them. Or I had an extreme form of them - I could only hear blens

People who have them are reluctant to speak for obvious reasons. Or the ones that have described their problem in detail still haven't helped CRS enough to fix or even find the problem.

[rubbish]

Roger that. Then we need to persuade people who have got it to come forward and help out or for the rats to directly approach the people who are upfront about having it.

For myself, it occurs when I look sideways in single engined fighters - thus I will have engine noise in one ear and the other one 'free' as it were.

For me though, the range doesn't make it that useful, I can only hear to a distance where they'd be getting close to, or inside guns range anyway.

[DOC]

testing and bug reporting pertaining to current beta (soon to be release) version only

if you comment in this thread with useful help to assist us in this issue, it needs to be related to current client development and nothing else

whatever the state of the issue in the live game for you is of no useful input to solving any issue now since release is almost upon us, and the client and host are very different in v1.34 than they were in v1.33 you are playing now

so any further comment in this thread needs to be about v1.34, if you are not testing "bionic ears" in the current beta development then anything you report will not do anything to help fix any problems you might be having

thread will be closed if reporting remains not relevent to what we can fix now or in development subsequent to v1.34

[GOPHUR]

People who have them are reluctant to speak for obvious reasons. Or the ones that have described their problem in detail still haven't helped CRS enough to fix or even find the problem.

Having done this for ten years now I can tell you that while you'd think the above to be correct it is actually completely reversed.

While some people who have a bug that works to their advantage won't speak out about it there are always some who will. Always.

That's because usually the exploiters don't really have any love for the game and ultimately they wonder off. On the other hand those who love the game love these bugs to get fixed and they report them. They also tend to stayt around for years while the exploiter is on to the next experience he can find to see how fast he can ruin it for himself. He thinks he's ruining it for others but he really isn't.

Now the problem we have with bugs like this are when they get to the tin hat stage. There is no evidence that we can find to support that this bug exists. No one can reproduce it while actively trying but they can say that it exists on belief.

Once you start seeing ghosts you always see ghosts.

[thief]

Having done this for ten years now I can tell you that while you'd think the above to be correct it is actually completely reversed.

While some people who have a bug that works to their advantage won't speak out about it there are always some who will. Always.

That's because usually the exploiters don't really have any love for the game and ultimately they wonder off. On the other hand those who love the game love these bugs to get fixed and they report them. They also tend to stayt around for years while the exploiter is on to the next experience he can find to see how fast he can ruin it for himself. He thinks he's ruining it for others but he really isn't.

Now the problem we have with bugs like this are when they get to the tin hat stage. There is no evidence that we can find to support that this bug exists. No one can reproduce it while actively trying but they can say that it exists on belief.

Once you start seeing ghosts you always see ghosts.

Stop saying "if we can't replicate it, there's no evidence it exist". You can't replicate the aws ghost bug either yet we see it every day. Is that too just a belief? a ghost? God that sentence is so worn out and so wrong.

People saying on TS "wait I hear a 109 somewhere, check six everyone" isn't a joke.

There is no tin hat.

[thief]

People like me won't wait forever for something to get fixed. 4 years is a pretty long time.

If you can't find the, try to eliminate the gaminess with different ways.

The basic problem here is - WHY should you hear the engine of another airplane at all when your engine is turned on? Why? Or hear truck driving on road. Even more silly but brings the problem out even better.

If you would say "it takes 6 months to code the sound changes - turn all sounds except your plane sounds off" I'll be a happy player!

Or if you revisit what you did with this:

"Removed engine volume factor in calculating external effect sounds, external explosions/hits should be more pronounced"

If you can make the explosions sound louder/weaker, can It be done to engine sounds???

That would make me even happier player!

[DOC]

4 years is NOTHING. If you knew, had any real idea what this project meant in terms of scope of content to develop, manage, debug and re-engineer, and what was available here to do it with, and compared that to a knowledge of industry standards in this business, you would NEVER make a statement like you just did. You think it's like ->this<- but you don't really know from experience that it's really like <-that-> ... we do this every day 5 or 6 days a week and have done for between 1 and two decades now.

It's not that what you perceive isn't happening, it's that you're not willing to listen or ask questions to see what it is, and instead insist it's what you believe it to be, which is not helping solve it because what you think it is (causing it, how it is to be found) is not correct. You are so convinced we are not listening or don't want to fix it or that you are right and we just don't want to beleive the truth you bring that you cannot get past that blockking how this must be approached and what is involved in fixing it.

Listening to those who build it and trusting the guidance you get in the search for answers is paramount to finding fixes. If you just adopt the "I know better and you don't know what I'm talking about or refuse to beleive me" attitude then you'll misintepret everything we say and every attempt to help you. We see this every day and it will never go away, if you leave 15 others will replace you with the same approach, because people think they know what causes something and they really don't a lot of the time. Then their passion for it (a good thing normally) takes over and voila, brick wall. Brick wall no listen, brick wall no learn.

We cannot fix why the sky is green for YOU (and blue for everyone else) if the reason is because you're wearing yellow lenses but you told us they were blue lenses (not sure of the actual color deal there but the point is made) ... what both Gophur and I are saying is WE WANT TO FIX ANY PROBLEM but YOU HAVE TO LISTEN TO US AND NOT STRIAGHT UP TELL US WE'RE FULL OF CRAP IF YOU WANT TO HELP US.

Sometimes I think a few of you just enjoy arguing.

[thief]

I feel brainwashed now

Hope I won't get banned for this :

[DOC]

thank you for making my point about you miscinstruing our communication better than I could

[OLDZEKE]

The beta is open. If you think there is a bug and it's buggin you then get with your squaddies in the beta and try to figgure out how to trigger it.

Call it a squad bug hunt night. Document what you find as to the how to replicate.

Determining if it's a certain sound card, setting etc will help toward pinning it down.

[Enigma]

What kind of information do the rats need exactly to get this done.

-Type of engine heard?

-Range?

-Sound card?

-Sound settings?

What else? I will try to keep a log of information for you guys.

[Tigger6]

1) Find a person with bionic ears

2) Drag him to beta and test.

It's quite problematic for the rats to test this, if they don't have a machine with the problem.

[rubbish]

Fairly certain I've figured this one out. Need to do more testing tomorrow.

[romzburg]

Or CRS could just do the obvious correct thing, and turn off all sounds except engine and projectile hits when the engine is on.

And when a player is buttoned up in a tank, turn off all sounds except anything triggered by an interior action, such as rotating turret, loading a sheck, whatever.

One of the main paralyzers with this game's development has been the intense love for "process" and the disdain for "outcome". There are so many examples of stuff that was just ridiculous when it happened, but was justified by "the code blah, blah, blah, we don't have hit points, blah, blah, blah, you didn't hit a critical component, blah, blah, blah)

We don't give a damn how awesome and complex the code is for telling your computer what sounds to play and when, if it continues to play sounds that simply can't be heard in a real-life similar situation.

If the A-bomb were modeled in this game, CRS would waste a million lines of code when they could just say "radius 1 mile everything is dead and destroyed".

All decisions of this type need to *start* with "What is the correct *outcome* for this event?" then "What is the most reliable way to achieve this outcome?"

Anytime you have a clear-cut binary-type answer, screw the process.

When an 88 shoots a Panhard in the turret and it penetrates, then: gun disabled, all crew dead. But instead we had "unless the 88's sheck actually hit the guy in the head, everything's cool."

I can't remember how many times I saw Panhards simply driving around, *off road*, with one entire wheel blown off, like that axle wouldn't dig into the ground when weighed down by an 8-ton vehicle.

All because outcome was ignored, process was king.

Same issue now.

There are situations where the player should hear *nothing* but what's inside his cockpit.

____________________

motormouth:

Much as Romzy's posting style can give me headaches (and the fact that he's "NEVAR WRONG!!"), that post pretty much nails it on the head.

sgtchief:

romz you['re] my damn hero

sydney:

Ya know, at first Romsburg, you rubbed me the wrong way and I wasn't a fan. But over the past 12 months, you have really grown on me. You're precise, well spoken and although you are sometimes a little harsh, you are most often correct and in proper context with your responses.

irelandeb:

indeed he's one of the few voices of common sense on these forums

jw:

If you're going to argue with Romz, do your homework before you post. He gets it, and you can't teach common sense, you have to be born with it.

pete, linc & julie:

I can't say [any]thing else [than] that the ban was justified considering that you have an 'impressive' TOS history....

owilde:

The only thing worse than being talked about is *not* being talked about.