Burning Bridges

Oh dear. You are right .. this seems to explain why I never got settings to have any noticeable effect .. Right now I would not use the sdefs because it's not clear what they do. Just drop in the wav files and delete the sdefs for now. And see what comes in the future.

Since the last update my aircraft sound has still evolved a bit ... a bit more engine whine mixed in from a real Mig-21 and Harrier. Not necessarily the "best" version, but what I'm using right now. It reached a point where I cannot simply decide what is better. Preliminary download version 5.0D

Great and looking forward to that! Can you also comment on the PlaneAroundEngine.wav? Why does it jump up in volume when the afterburner engages? Why is the PlaneAfterburner.wav sound itself so quiet?? That seems to me the biggest issue from what I know because when we improve the afterburner sound it messes up the sound without afterburner and vice versa.

The cockpit is great, also love all those clicking sounds and the excellent view. But once it switches to external sound it is like a jump back into a sim from the 90s.

It looks like he wrote that someone else is working on a Mig-23 but only in the vaguest terms and then again it could also be cancelled in a year i.e. "it was not right to say that". For now the Mig-23 is dead again, which is really sad. I am only interested in non high tech planes (Russian or 60s) and the 23 is on I am most looking forward to. Not least because I am old enough to remember these flying over me in East Germany, I can even remember the distinct earth camo.

Yes there seems to be a very noticeable sound loop at 5:04

Nope, and that goes beyond the scope of this mod. Inside cockpit sound is already pretty good imo. Besides, if you compare with videos it seems you dont hear all that much anyway :)

Yet another update :) The latest version brings back more of an afterburner sound, while not interfering much with the engine. Due to the quirks of the sound engine this is always a compromise. But all in all there are not too many outstanding issues with it. In fact I like the engine sound very much now, and it retains most of the desirable qualities of previous versions. Flybys are also greatly improved. That the aircraft is a bit noisy on the ground is normal and the price to pay for the afterburner and better sound while flying. But I toned this down as much as possible. Preliminary download version 4.2C

Hi. Different than before the mod, or different than the corresponding video?

Mig-21 external sound 4.1A demo on vimeo For some reason youtube doesn't want me to make those videos. Perhaps I just made too many videos with similar content. So I have reuploaded to vimeo. The download link for 4.1A is still above under that defunct youtube video.

Thanks. Yes, normally every new file I made should be an improvement. If you liked 4.0 then 4.1 should definitely be up your alley, because its mostly the same with small corrections. Mostly the front engine sound. For some reason youtube has rejected the last video - for some violation of community rules :no_sad: But the download link is legit. I must see if I upload the video to vimeo instead.

I would not worry too much that we will have two competing Mig-23 and 19 and that it will negatively impact both. Because may I remind you that right now we have zero. Where does it even say that Leatherneck is working on any of these planes? I read somewhere that a long time ago Beczl was planning on a Mig-23 asfter the Mig-21, but after he departed the project was abandoned. Whenever such issue is mentioned I just see vague statements, like "possibly maybe we will start working on new models when the AJS37 and Tomcat are completet, but dont expect this to happen before 20xx." I see no indication that LNS is currently working on any such planes, nor is there any enthusiasm, As to work that was done before by Beczl, it is my understanding that it's not like someone else can simply come and take over the work he completed. It may sound easy in theory, but in practice it just doesn't work that way. And now with these snips from Razbam I am actually happy that someone is building on a Mig-23 at all (the Mig-19 is also something I would buy as it fills a nice gap). If there should be two competing projects in the future I would worry about that once I know it is a fact.

OK. Here is the result of fine tuning I described above. Frontengine is now much different without the excessive air intake sound, transonic flyby is a bit weird but that seems unavoidable. Afterburner engage / disengage without anything odd. Afterburner quieter than v3. Everything is else is pretty much in a state where I would be happy to call this a finished version. Hopefully I can get back to flying now. Preliminary download version 4.1A

There is another thing that I accepted, which is the weird front flyby sounds in the transonic range, from ca 350 - 450 knots. While the airplane flies towards you at such speeds it sounds kind of weird and that pertains will all kinds of different wave files, so I think I will have to accept it as well. I am not sure what an approaching airplane sounds like when it is getting near the sound barrier so for me personally that is not an issue. Now as to the spool whine of the engine, that imo simply does not add up once in the air. You also have these weird effects when the afterburner kicks in, that the sound suddenly jumps up, and then down again when it disengaged. Anyway, most of the work was a compromise, I hope you understand that, and the most important goal to me was to make this realistic and exciting while flying in the F2 view, and I think it does.

I can confirm the behavior that BadHabit pointed out, From the front of the engine you hear mostly wind intake sound, even with the airplane still standing. I have therefore replaced the Su25FrontEngine file with a different file, which fixes that. As to "mixing" the desirable aspects of the two last versions, that is easier said than done. This goes especially for anything related to the afterburner. The problem with afterburner is as such. 1. There is a dedicated afterburner sound (PlaneAfterburner.wav) but it's too quiet and I take great effort to make it as noticeable as possible. However I can not really increase the volume. 2. Another hard coded problem is that for some reason instead of the PlaneAfterburner.wav, Su25AroundEngine.wav is suddenly increased in volume. All real efforts to improve the afterburner seem to direct on this file and maybe this is the reason why people have such difficulty in modding this plane. It's of course possible to improve the Su25AroundEngine.wav to get a better afterburner effect. The problem with this is that the sound will be audible all the time. That means if I increase the roar from the afterburner, it will also be heard during all other stages of the flight (though a lot quiter). That's what I meant with "afterburner sound interfering with other sounds" - I established this when I muted all other sounds. And for this reason I did away with it and replaced it with mostly more wind, which does in turn not suppress the engine sound but actually make it sound more natural (the cruising sound in the air is basically modelled after what I heard when I fly with commercial aircraft). The good thing is that this sounds best when the aircraft is flying, and personally I enjoy more actually flying the aircraft. Hopefully the afterburner sounds can be improved again, but for now the actual cruising is most important to me.

I liked it too, bringing that back is only replacing back the Su25BackEngine.wav. But it was getting on my nerves in the air, and it was not realistic. This was just a quick release of everything I did today, I will try to rearrange the files and see if it gets better.

Fa8Imb_K83Y This would be a good reference, if it can ever be achieved :)

I recorded the same mission again with v4, still some work to do but I like the cruising sounds (the afterburner roar during dlybys had to go, as it was creating a sound loop and interfered with other sounds).

Ok, every time I think I am finished but this is one of those things that started to take on a life of its own .. I understand more and more about the problems and limitations, and finally I had a list of files that I can work with. So I tried to make a more minimalistic version. What I did was, create more "air" sounds, the over the top noise is gone (for now) and this is also a more otologist friendly version. The prominent spool whine of the engine is gone too, it was nice for taxiing but I could not match it with real world recordings. My feeling is that it gives me more and more the feeling of flying a supersonic plane. I hope you feel so too. I dont want to release a new version every 2 days, but at the same time I want feedback as soon as possible, and I want the work I did to matter. So it would be stupid to talk of new work and noit upload it too. Who wants to try is more than welcome. Preliminary download version 4.0D Again: this is different than v3. I would like to know what you think, hopefully some of the noise can be brought back in the future but this one is much much cleaner. Everything is achieved with only 4 sound files, not by overwriting a lot of files until the result was somehow right ..

Thanks. Version 4 is incoming. It is again a complete overhaul but this time I was aiming for a much cleaner version and I hope that I solved most of the problems that flanker1 pointed out!

Whatever, I always thought that this was good sound ..

I agree. There is a lot left to be desired, and the noise should arrive like a wave after the plane. I don't understand most of the settings in the sdef files. Than means I have no information what settings like inner_radius, outer_radius, cone_inner_angle, cone_outer_angle, cone_outer_gain, etc mean. All I know is that they must somehow control this behavior to some point. Another problem is currently that I cannot set the noise level of sound files. Some sounds in the Mig-21 seem much quieter than others, for example the afterburner, which makes it hard to achieve what I want. The good thing is that I now at least found a good way to detect the relevant files. I simply listened to all files and if I recognized one I replaced it an empty wave file until I got a completely silenced version. That way I know now which files can be changed (they are maybe 8 or so that change the external noise of the plane), and it is not too hard to replace them, though the noise level is a problem.

Cool, let me know what you think. It may still be improved. For now I must stop I think I already have tinitus.

Yes, I just made a download link 30 seconds ago

I thought I was nearly finished with this mod .. but when I realized what needs to be done, I ended up redoing almost everything from scratch. These are completely new sound recordings and I tried to match them with real Mig-21 sounds. Now let me be honest, supersonic jets tend to be VERY LOUD, and it's really not nice when one flies directly over you. The goal was too make the sound as close as possible, I may have gone overboard, but your otologist strongly advises you to NOT USE THIS! My prediction is that once you have heard these external sounds and checked that they are good, you will get inside the canopy again and enjoy the relative silence :) The flying in the track is shit, I am aware of that but bear with me, I need to fly the whole video from external views .. still have not find out how to make videos any other way. Preliminary download link