NASCAR SimRacing recreates the engine note and other sounds that real drivers hear when they are in the cockpit more realistically than any other game.
Jesse James Allen (lead sound designer), Aubrey Hodges (audio director) and Scott Johnson (Software Engineer) are the people that really made this happen. Here's the story.
The sounds audible when driving an 800 horsepower NEXTEL Cup Series stock car are intense and just as important to any driver as their ability to see and feel the environment in which they compete.
The snarl of the throttle opening, the attitude of the transmission impatient for your decision on what gear you choose, the banshee-like whine of wind, tires screaming out at the very limit of grip, fire breathing exhausts and last but not least the deafening pack sound of over 33,000 horsepower nipping at your heels all pose unique challenges when tasked with creating the sound that is engraved in every racer's head and identified as the definitive sound of NASCAR.
In order for NASCAR SimRacing to sound realistic, we all agreed that the sound effects and samples to be used must all be real. We also agreed that those sound effects and samples must be played in a manor as realistic as possible in order to recreate the real sound of NASCAR. With our hearts and minds set on using real sounds, we arranged to record sounds of a real NASCAR stock car being driven at a real track by a professional test driver.
Finally, the day came to record NASCAR. It took three hours to wire the recording equipment to the car.
Our biggest concern, however, was not time but whether the recording equipment would be able to function as required in an environment where G-forces and vibrations might well shake the recording gear to bits or heat might even melt it. Another concern was that of distortion. Research (which turned out to be correct) had us believe that the sound of the engine alone would be in the ballpark of 130 decibels, which is about as loud as a 747 jet at takeoff.
Tension was running high but at approximately 12:00 midday, we deemed our portable, self powered recording studio housed inside a real NASCAR car ready to capture everything exactly as our driver would hear in full digital surround sound. With our fingers crossed, we informed our test driver that it was time to hit the track.
Our test driver, Tommy King ran lap after lap at the Richard Petty driving experience in Orlando, Florida, making the car do everything we could think of it doing in a race. At the end of the day, we were relieved to remove all of our equipment in one piece and later back in the studio discover that the recordings were even better than we had ever imagined.
With the real sound of NASCAR fresh in all of our ears and more importantly securely stored in our recording studios, focus shifted to software design/engineering and the task of creating a new audio engine that we now refer to you as GEN5.
GEN5 supports surround sound and is able to provide a real-time mix of audio perspectives. If the perspective mix is dead center it sounds identical to being the driver seat of the car (engine in the front speakers, exhaust in the rear speakers). If the position shifts to third-person perspective, you hear a more exhaust based mix.
Throttle sounds are extracted and recreated using advanced pitch-mapping techniques, to create specific RPM ranges in a process called harmonic layering. This process and others enable NASCAR SimRacing to recreate perfectly the sound of real torque curves, gear shifts and load displacement on throttle. Every RPM is accurate and referenced to in car race footage, and every pitch is original and un-synthesized.
NASCAR SimRacing sounds real because it is real!
More NASCAR SimRacing Developer Diaries
Diary #1: "The Driver's Eye"
Diary #2: "Trackside"
Diary #3: "Telemetry"
Diary #4: "The Nextel Cup & Beyond"
