Today we talk with Luca Piccina, Audio Director of RaceWard Studio (a division of Nacon Studio Milan), to understand how the sound atmosphere of TT Isle Of Man: Ride on the Edge 3 was implemented.
Can you explain how you recorded the sound of the bike?
We had the opportunity to visit the TT last year and capture both bikes and live ambiences there, so you will listen to all live footage captured there during the race days. We wanted to recreate the atmosphere of the race at its best.
Bike sounds were recorded directly on track, following the same procedure applied with RiMS Racing. We tied several mics on the bike and let the rider drive freely while we captured the sound with a portable recorder that was given to the rider in a backpack.
How do you integrate your recording in the game?
Recordings are integrated via middleware and plugins into the game engine. Proper tuning has to be performed in order to bind the samples we recorded to proper acceleration, deceleration, braking, different cameras.
Moreover, a consistent system managing ambient sounds such as soundscape and crowds, AI and mixing policies has to be created to avoid overlooking any element but always emphasizing the right thing at the right moment
How is it working with the different view in the game?
Personally I really like to emphasize the difference between the cameras and give the player a different "audio" perspective related to the different visual representation of the cameras.
Being a rider myself I like for example to characterize Helmet and Front Views with strong wind, like in real life. It's always possible anyway to customize wind and the other sound elements using the options menu according to personal preferences.
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Can you talk about the importance of a good sound design in a racing game?
Sound - as it's often said - is "half of the experience" and greatly contributes to providing the player with excitement and immersion. In racing games in particular it can also help the player to improve driving by giving him some feedback like the position of the opponents, the sense of speed, the correctness of the trajectory, etc..
We know RiMS Racing was congratulated for his sound design. Did you use the same methods?
I think that if one likes RiMS Racing audio should also love TT Isle of Man: Ride On The Edge 3, we maintained the same audio pipeline and aimed for maximum realism by collecting all real footage.
We used the same spatialization systems, we kept the same philosophy in differentiating the game cameras and also paid a lot of attention to AI sound.
I hope you'll enjoy TT Isle of Man: Ride On The Edge 3 audio!
