Hello Matt, thank you for your detailed answer. I hope so much, that Deutsche Bahn or an other german railway operator gives you access to a german diesel shunter in the future, so that you could record the original engine noises perfectly.
It varies depending on the train, but if you can't get ideal recordings then obviously you're going to have to start getting creative at some point. Audio is the main challenge with any recreation of a loco, usually because there are often lots of photo references for a loco available and the art teams are exceptionally good at figuring it out from a wide range of images even if they aren't necessarily the front/sides/top etc images they prefer. - Is the engine sound similar to another loco that can be recorded? If so, do that. - If not, is it electric? if so - electric sounds can be synthesized (which makes a difficult job sound a lot easier than it is) so as long as there's some half decent youtube or DVD reference available that you can run a Fourier Transform over to break it down, it's not impossible to make a reasonable attempt to synthesize it from scratch. - If it's diesel and there's nothing similar that can be recorded, OR, there's not enough reference available to understand how it sounds - then essentially that kind of loco is less likely to be recreated and if it IS (because it's highly sought after by the community for example) then it's a case of finding something that sounds plausible and just going with that. - There may also be alternative sources that sound similar such as a lorry engine (useful for recreating some Genset sounds to some extent). The GTEL that was done for Sherman Hill on TS1 obviously couldn't be recorded from the real thing, but was actually recorded from someones model of a Gas Turbine engine in their garage and then adjusted to try and make it compare with the recordings of the real thing. It's important to understand that while electrics can be somewhat synthesized to a reasonable level, diesels cannot, so you could see electrics as being "easier" to achieve where diesels are much more dependent to the requirement for some kind of audio access. End of the day, if it doesn't exist any more, there's no photos of it and no recordings of it at all anywhere - it'd either be not done at all, or it would be done as an artistic recreation with educated guesses taken. Matt.
To add to that, my experience in making loco addons for TS1 in the last 8 years show me, that it is not often so much importnat to have 100% correct sound or model. Most users/customers are happy to have it, even if it is not totally perfect. I was always on that path to create the "perfect" stuff and blocked myself with that approach. When it is only 80 or even only 50% of the real thing, most customers are happy with it because a not perfect loco is better than no loco at least. It worked so in MSTS, TRS/PTP, TS1 and why shouldn't it be fine for TSW too. When you hunting for the perfect simulation of a loco you will never get it done. The target should be to have as much usable rolling stock in TSW and not having only a few more peferct locos in there.
And that's what I meant by frog DNA. Also interesting imho: These guys who are recreating another vehicle that is very poorly documented and also has been in a ... non-operational condition shall we say... for a long time. They talk a bit on the visual modeling aspect of the issue. They also use the frog DNA analogy:
And along those lines these guys have ambitious plans to recreate the pioneer LMS 10000 using all sorts of donor components. It'll be just like the original, only different. It does show there is interest in the extinct locomotive classes, although it'd be tricky to mic this one up for TSW since it was scrapped in 1968!
Even if they get their motor working that'll be the best representation of that loco soundwise we can get. Of course not too many people would no remember what it sounded like so comparisons would be harder as well so less naysayers
I have no real world experience with the majority of the locomotives in this game so I couldn't even begin to tell you what would constitute properly authentic sounds for most locomotives outside of the US. My criteria for the enjoyment of the sounds of these locomotives are 1) are the sounds high quality and 2) are the sounds believable to the point where I can picture the sounds fitting that locomotive. Aside from the horns on most US locomotives, DTG have done a great job on believably recreating the sound sets for what we have in game imho
I think this hits the crux of the discussion- are the sounds believable and immersive. In an earlier post Matt pointed out the different capabilities of the Unreal Engine compared to TS2020 regarding sound and with that in mind, I assume there might be an evolution in this area.
beats me when they were recording sounds on rsn and msb, why didnt thet record a german diesel at the same time
Matt has explained that above. There wasn't one available and electrics sounds can be synthesized approximately, diesel sounds cannot
Because one was not available, people were not there to support recording it, numerous reasons. Read the thread Dave - Schnauzahpowahz asked that exact question
Thats an impressive vacuum cleaner youve got there Anthony. It sounds like the one I wanted to buy but was over-ruled in favour of something 'more sensible'..