static noise in audio - only in Lock On - Hear my plea, dear developers.

[Shigawire]

Dear developers at Eagle Design. I love your simulation, even though there are some nuts and bolts that needs to be fixed. Like the AI, sound and dynamic campaign (lack thereof)! :rolleyes:

 

Regarding the sound issue.. I actually upgraded from onboard AC97 to Audigy 2 ZS purely for the sake of LOMAC. It did nothing to remove the static. Now I have formatted c: , reinstalled Windows, tried soundcard in 2 different PCI slots (4 and 3). The problem is only prevalent in LOMAC, in other games the problem is virtually non-existant.

 

I know that LOMAC doesn't have any fancy sound, and that it doesn't even have STEREO and has to emulate it using mono, and the result is poor.

Therefore, it is understandable that I probably don't need the hardware accelleration... but the problem is that I will have to nullify HW accelleration every time just for the sake of LOMAC! Believe it or not, but there are indeed other games that have NO problems with HW accellerated audio, and I don't want to switch it between full and null for 1 game. I have done enough for LOMAC's sake already. Bought a new audio card, formatted and reinstalled..

Will you look at, and perhaps resolve this issue in the nearby future? Maybe you could look at alternative codecs for the audio?

P.s. I have downloaded ZZZSPACE's sound mod 8.0, which does minimize the extent of the bug, but not enough.

[VapoR]

I will second this. They REALLY should work on the sound, if not for a patch, then for 1.2. It is pretty sad really that Lomac was realized with such a horrible sound engine.

[luke97]

Same here. The crackle is horrible. Maybe is the effect of the loop of the wave/ogg files? Maybe the engine does not handle it correctly...

[Shigawire]

I hope this issue can climb up the developers' priority-ladder from "unimportant" to "critical", because it really is critical imho.

[S77th-Paralyzer]

There's also a bug with disappearing sounds (mostly the mech sounds) when cycling through different planes using external views. This also happens in multiplayer after hitting the recover button.

 

Let's hope this gets fixed.

[USSR_Baikal]

Sound probs is old probs in LO and this probs may be not fully correctable in nearest future... ED knows about it. They trying..

[S77th-Paralyzer]

Thanks for replying Baikal!

 

The disappearing mech sound was not a problem at all with 1.02. This only started with FC 1.1. Any ideas? Thanks again.

[USSR_Baikal]

I still have some probs w sound from 1.02 ver ( in case of recovering in MP game) .. Some sounds still going off after recovery in MP...

[Shigawire]

I know you guys at ED do your best. You already have other stuff you are trying to do, like adding new planes etc.. But I just think this should be fixed BEFORE making any more additions, since this is a basic fault. I have to turn HW accelleration to NULL (not even basic) every time just to play LOMAC.

 

I believe I read somewhere that LOMAC doesn't even use 3d sound! It even stated that the sound engine is a monaural engine that emulates stereo! IF this is true, wouldn't it be best for ED to remodel their sound engine to do proper 3d, and use a well-established standard like EAX instead?

 

Just a thought.

 

If what I read were lies, maybe the static could be caused by some conflict between the decoder engines? I noticed that LOMAC uses BOTH OGG vorbis and PCM Wave.. And I also noticed that the sound engine uses a lot of tiny short samples to compose into very complex sounds. I know that when multiple soundfiles are played simultaneously, or over eachother, this can indeed cause such an effect.. Because, what appears to happen with the sound, is that it appears not to be "clamped" (as we call it in the CG business) or "normalized" as it's properly called. It is as if the sound engine attempts to play sounds WELL beyond the possible range, thus causing "truncation" of the sound, in the form of glitches, clicks and pops.

 

It's amazing how awesome and immersive the experience can be with proper sound! It would add tenfold to LOMAC.. and we wouldnt need to turn HW accelleration off every time we wanted to splash some bogeys. ;)

[MonnieRock]

Hello Everyone,

 

Not to sound negative.

 

I look forward to all the add ons that ED is working on. I will buy them also to support their cause. What I do not understand is, they are building on top of a weak foundation the sound engine creates. Yes, the graphics engine does a fine job for DX8.1.

 

My analogy would be: You can build a skyscaper to reach hundreds of stories if the foundation can support it. If the foundation is weak, the building will fall.

 

This is hard to understand also because I am a musician and sound is a big part of my life. Damn musicians are anal about sound ;)

 

Thanks

Monnie

[diveplane]

yes the sound engine is not very good at all, crackle pop hiss ,buzzing

 

ed really needs to put the heads together and correct this before launching

another paypal addon......

 

 

imo fix for better frame rates and tweak that game engine and sound engine

as best yous can.......