Bananimal

Hi folks, Sorry for the lack of posts. Personal things have stolen my time yet again. I have manged to make some progress though. Finished the 2016 CAG bird and the first 2004 line bird. I will say that sometimes, stepping away has its advantages. You see things that you didn't see before and can address them. I've been taking my time on these two because these two are going to be the templates for all the others that I will be paining. I've learned to not make mistakes and then duplicate them, because instead of fixing one problem, I now have twenty to fix if I duplicate the mistakes without catching them first. So, as I approach the "template makers" as I'll refer to them, I'm taking my time to get them right. One thing I need to address on the line bird is the height of the VFA-106 font. It must match the height of the font on the tank. Close, but not there yet. Once that is done, I will be duplicating off of these two to bring the rest of the aircraft into the pack. That should go relatively quick. Relatively quick being the operative there. Still haven't started the camo bird. That will be last. Note the color of the tail emblem on the 300 bird. In most pictures it looks black most of the time as in real life, but it is actually blue. You can see it depending on the angle. I tried to capture that as best I can. I think I did good. Dark blues are really funny in the DCS lighting engine. But if you look at real pics, you see these dark blues behave the same. The rear shot of the 300 aircraft cocked to one side should show you what I'm speaking to. And yes, the decals are 100% created from scratch.

It won't be in the lua file, it'll be in the sdef file.

That's going to happen when the camera is zoomed way in but is actually further away from the aircraft.

I've made some changes to the intake sounds and a few other adjustments. Not all problems with the original sounds have been addressed in this mod. Namely because I am not a seasoned sound modder. But, it should get us by until HB or someone else makes adjustments to the original sounds. Download link is in my signature.

I agree. Tone is a difficult thing to achieve with text. I've updated the mod. If you have downloaded and installed it previously, you can download again. I removed the front flyby view completely. It was a constant droning that's not needed in the sim IMO. I also extended the radius of the intake sounds back to normal so that they don't cut out as soon. Was not able to introduce the hum I wanted to, but oh well. This will work until someone else or HB make their adjustments. :thumbup:

I'm still making some adjustments to this mod to try and get things a little better. I was talking to Carl last night and he showed me a vid of the HUM that the engines have. I'm trying to work that into the mod. The HUM sounds is already included with the module, so it's a matter of adjusting the pitch to get it to blend with my wav file replacements for the intake. As far as the flyby sound. There's not much I know how to do there. The way it is setup, it kicks in after the aircraft passes. This means I would have to adjust the radius to start the sound pretty much at the back of the aircraft, then it steps on the Close Rear exhaust sound. Blending all of this together is quite the trick. I wish I was better at it. The distant aircraft sound is really bugging me too. It's on all the time and at the same level no matter how far you zoom in or out. Kinda wonky. These are the things that were not well looked after in the module IMO. To be made to feel like we are imbeciles and jerks for trying to make the Tomcat really shine leaves me scratching my head a bit. While I understand HB's position that their sounds are from a real Tomcat and therefore must be accurate, I don't understand the unwillingness to take a little advice from the community. It's kind of odd.

Mod is here.

Yes, the issue persists in my mod because I'm not familiar with how it all works. There's some things you can and can't do within the limitations of the DCS sound engine. But, at least the intakes now sound like and F-14B. It's a start.

Link will be here with my other downloads once approved. Bananimal's DCS Mods and Skins

Having to compromise on the flyby view. The intake sounds cause a whistle. If I reduce the radius so that doesn't happen, then when you zoom out about 200 feet from the aircraft, the intakes go silent. Perhaps someone else with some knowledge of the sound engine can take it a bit further. It's a good start.

Yes, I'm on vacation this week and painting will resume at full capacity.

Thanks for the feedback. I saw that in a threat earlier today. Apparently, an update to the aircraft.lua file is all that is needed. I appreciate your taking the time to reply.

OK, I've taken it as far as I know how to. I decreased the Intake sounds as well. It seems to be more balanced now. Uploading now.

I'm going to decrease the flyby sounds a little more. They are still too loud IMO. Especially the front flyby. It's a pity they aren't tied to throttle input. That more than likely is a limitation of the DCS sound engine. Dunno. I'll upload it tonight once I finish tweaking it.

I don't think it's an issue with the source, but more the levels and the effort put into, or lack thereof, mixing them. Fixed it for you. And I haven't touched DCS sounds since the Lock-on days. If I, a relatively inexperienced sound modder can improve it, I'm sure you guys could have. :music_whistling: I'll push it up to the community ASAP. 1. Corrected the intake sounds by replacing it with a custom one and increased the gain to better reflect a Tomcat. 2. Blended the Rear Close and Flyby sounds by decreasing their volume and increasing the cone on the Flyby Side sound to better match the new intake sounds. 3. Reduce the volume of the Front Flyby sound to better reflect not being able to hear the tail pipes so loudly as the aircraft approaches. The original was on all the time and loud at that. Not in the least what one would expect looking at the front of a taxiing Tomcat. Like I said, it's a levels thing. This is what a GE F-110 equipped Tomcat should sound like in DCS. At least as close as I could get it. I'm no sound modding expert. So, once I upload it, if anyone wants to take it and run with it, be my guest. Just mention me in the credits so I'll know to download it and replace my version with yours, as I'm sure someone can do a better job than me. I was just so fed up with it I gave it a try today and spent 6 hours dinking with it. I'm okay with the way it turned out. :) Let me know what you guys think.

Here's a good vid of a GE F-110.

From my perspective, having seen this aircraft in person many, many times, the external sounds are wrong. I don't care how Heatblur feels about it. Hearing that this is near final because Heatblur is happy with it is most unfortunate. If a dev is not willing enough to at least use a frame work where corrections can be made by the community, well, the value of the product is further decreased in my eyes. Echo-19 did a great job modding the F-18 sounds. He took a deep dive into this module and discovered some glaring shortcuts. And that is exactly what they are, shortcuts. Flyby sounds that are on all the time are realistic? Really? And for $80.00? Yeah, okay! The sounds on this module are, in my opinion, the worst of any recent module I've owned in this sim. They are on par with FC3 sounds. I was hoping since it is pre-release, it would be looked after. Reading this thread has diminished that hope significantly. I, and several of the guys I fly with, no longer fly the Tomcat that much because we can't get over the horrible external sounds. Even worse, it's not entirely correctable by the community. We've got a sound mod in that corrects the front sounds, but the rear 100% mil power sound all the time that does not pitch shift with throttle input is so unrealistic it's laughable that it is being passed off as such by the dev. It's your company. You are certainly entitled to run it as you see fit.

Definitely makes sense. I've never really thought about that, to be honest. I guess that's why I'm not a video creator. :-) Don't get me wrong, the videos are great, it's just we customers have no way of knowing what the aircraft will really sound like when it is released for purchase, and then we get a sound dud like the F-14 that enhances our skepticism. At least mine, anyway. I can't speak for the entire DCS community. And please, I hope neither of you are taking this as a personal attack. It's not intended to be. I just noticed a lack of continuity across the mods in terms of sound implementation. Some standardization would help a good bit. If the framework is there and it's consistent, then any correction the community may want to make will be possible. As I understand it, the F-14 is not really that correctable. At least not to the level the ED F/A-18 is. It's more like the older FC3 modules.

Thanks for diving in on this thread Kantantsin. I will say, the newer ED aircraft have been much, much better than the older ED modules. Your work there has certainly been noticed and appreciated. I was speaking more to the older modules like those in the FC3 series. The F-86 is another one. The f-5 Tiger, another. The afterburners on that thing sound more like an F-15. I'd be willing to bet bags to donuts that if you guys reached out to the community to assist with acquiring sounds for some of these aircraft, you'd get a barrage of replies with links to their personal videos that may not be posted on YouTube. That's the one thing about this community, we'll help make the sim better if we can. I try to do my part by skinning. Collectively, I truly believe there are enough talented customers to help drive the product further. If you take a look at Echo-19s F-18 Sound mod for the DCS F/A-18 you'll see how far some in the community are willing to go if given a proper framework to work with. Evidently, you guys did it right with the F/A-18. For the Heatblur F-14 though, it appears they took some significant shortcuts in the sound implementation and therefore the same level of realism is not attainable, even with a community mod. That's why I think it would be a good idea for ED to have a few round tables with the 3rd party devs and outline a standard framework in the SDK for sounds and how they must be implemented in their modules. Otherwise, you get what we're getting, 3rd party devs doing what they want, which is not necessarily a good thing for assuring customers that they will receive an expected level of quality when purchasing these modules. Continuity in quality is important for the brand. The other thing with DCS is that many aircraft share the same sound files. That's a good thing for saving HDD space, but a really bad obstacle for modders because changing one sound to get more realism in a specific aircraft results in changes to the sound for other aircraft as well. Being a long time MS Flight Simulator, FSX, P3D guy.......each aircraft has it's own sound folder. Don't like the sounds? Swap out the wav files for more accurate sounds and that aircraft is the only one affected. The way DCS is currently setup, this is not possible, so we tend to be stuck with the older sounds on some of the earlier modules. I've been a customer of ED products since the first version of Flanker back in the 90's. I've had every iteration of the product and own just about all of the modules and scenery to date. We're so close to having perfection in the sim, I think the older sounds and the way they were implemented is really the only thing falling short.

I think part of the issue is implementation. Many of the aircraft have that constant jet blast from the rear when in reality it's nowhere near that loud when on the ramp or taxiing. And the absence of pitch shift with throttle input makes it worse. If only ED would take some time to hash this out. It hasn't changed much since the Lock On days. If it costs a little more per module to get proper sound, I'm in. I spend much more time finding, downloading, installing, and testing sound mods to complain about a five or ten dollar increase. The cost vs. time savings is certainly a consideration. Hell, even a for purchase "Pro Sound Pack" would be awesome, so those that are willing to pay more for more realism have that option.

Here's a pretty decent vid of some F-5 Tiger IIs for reference. I think the jet blast sound in DCS for the F-5 is way too strong.

I was mostly speaking to the external engines sounds. Sorry, I should have clarified that. Most DCS modules suffer from an annoyingly constant thrust sound from the rear while on the ramp or taxiing. In the case of the F-14, it is excessively loud and never changes with throttle input. I'm hopeful Heatblur has some changes in mind. I know that Belsimtek did do some work on the F-18 after release and it is much better that it was at release. As far as sound volume? I wasn't speaking to how loud a jet is, but more just what they sound like. Here's an example, although the poor quality mic used here is clipping, you get the idea.

One of the things that I often dwell on after buying a brand new module is the sounds that come with some of these modules. While the aircraft and systems get tremendous attention from the developers, it seems that the sounds are not given that much attention all. I can say that DCS is not the only title I have where this is evident. It seems to be a common theme with many developers. As an example, Dovetail's Train Simulator will release a locomotive module. I'll buy it, dive into the sim and load up the locomotive only to hear sounds that literally destroy the immersion to a level where one of the first things I go out and look for is a sound mod to hopefully fix it. And I say "hopefully" because it's not always possible. I've even had to fix some myself if I could. Most recently on the DCS side of the fence, at least for me, the F-14 sounds. Heatblur spent all kinds of time developing an outstanding model that looks and behaves so realistically, if you were to superimpose it over a photo of real terrain, you'd have a hard time telling it was CGI. But the sounds. They sound nothing like an F-14. At all! And in my eyes, it destroys all of the effort they put into the model itself. Why put that much effort into something and ignore one of the most important things required to suspend disbelief? The sounds. That's 50% of the experience given 10% of the attention. It makes no sense to me. The other issue is, I feel there is no continuity between devs in how they decide to implement the sounds for their models. I think it would be helpful if ED required the devs to adhere to a specific sounds framework when they build a module. This would achieve some consistency. Right now, some of the modules use the old sound methodology, and some like the F-18, use a newer method. At least that is how I understand it. Now, I'm not looking to start arguments here. This is my opinion. If yours is different, that is great. I just wanted to get some ideas from others and see if they are feeling the same about our beloved hobby. If we had an improved sound engine for DCS there would be very few shortcomings in most of the modules. But to me, the sounds are pitiful efforts in many cases. If you think I'm off my rocker, ask yourself why ED module promotional films use real aircraft sounds in them and put a disclaimer about it. Just the mere act of doing that tells me they must feel the same way about the sound engine in DCS as well. What are your thoughts? Please no flaming. I get it if some of you are okay with the sounds. I hope to get some good input from the community and hopefully something good may come out of it.

Yes. It has been sold.

Yeah,the grey one. If there is a green one, please share pics if you have any. STATUS: This weekend past saw no painting. We had severe weather from Thursday through Sunday morning. Then, my 2.5 year old Samsung 65" curved 4K TV decided to start failing. Couldn't paint due to the red and green pixels failing causing blue splotches all over the screen. Last time I'll buy a Samsung. Had to go out and buy a new TV. What a freaking week. Good news is, the new screen has better blacks and color over all. I'll probably jump back into painting tomorrow.