I am surprised this issue is not more widely discussed. Both Xbox and PlayStation are plagued by looping audio. This occurs when a sound plays for a short duration followed by a distinct pop or break in the audio which then repeats, again and again. It is an unpleasant listening experience and has been a problem since the console edition’s inception, though it appears to be worsening in recent trains. On PlayStation, the new Class 90 suffers from this issue on the AWS and DSD alarms (I believe all trains are affected by this on the safety system alarms) and the traction motor fans. The Class 350’s unique traction motor sound also exhibits this problem, as does the higher-pitched sound that fades in and out during acceleration on the Class 390. I would be grateful if any developers or knowledgeable individuals could provide an explanation for this issue and suggest a potential solution? I have not noticed it as much on the Medway Valley 375, if at all, so has this been configured differently? I would also love to hear other people’s opinions on this matter as I can’t believe I’m the only one that hates it so much.
I know the class 31 and 37 have the problem on 100% throttle. I presumed it was a mixing issue rather than hardware related. Would be interesting to know if it only impacts Xbox/PS and if so, DTG can investigate along with everything else
When they're editing the audio they need to actually blend the cuts together. ItsYa165 has some good techniques to show of in this video, it's pretty long but very informative
I’ve noticed this on Rapid Transit too. Hold the horn for a few seconds and you’ll notice it sounds painfully bad. You can hear it looping the sound over and over again.
looping traction motor sounds are very bad on the class 390. Its a real shame for a product that is the mainstay of multiple routes.
can it be fixed? possibly will it be fixed? no way in a million years. it was allegedly fixed on xbox for tsw5, lo and behold we’ve got nowhere since then
Has been a problem since I own TSW. Made a huge riot about it back then. They managed to fix it on PS5 for a while but since TSW6 it's back on a lot of loco's. That's why I'm not complaining about the reduced volume on the medway valley line. I was assuming that was their fix for the looping audio.
Yeah I was gonna say, outside of a couple of things such as the 700 (which is the same for every platform), looping audio disappeared. Now in TSW 6 it’s on quite a lot of things. Same with just really poor audio distortion on some things, the GWR 150 is really bad for example. I do tend to notice it’s more prolific on third party items though.
I just done a night run with the 700 on MVL and unfortunately when accelerating the audio looping is still present.
DTG tends to blame UE4 for multiple issues. I'm not a fan of Unreal Engine in general, however there are UE4 games without stuttering and without audio issues. Also Firefly has shown us that routes can be optimized and the overall quality can be way better then what DTG delivers. So in the end, DTG looks more like incompetent or lazy.
So the question is, how do we get DTG to acknowledge this and resolve it?. It’s an immersion killer for sure. I recall driving the class 37 when it was first released on TVL with a PS4 and there was no audio looping!. I can’t imagine they’ll have to redesign the whole game to fix it. On a side note, I’ve been keeping an eye on the Medway thread and how quickly Firefly are acknowledging feedback and looking to implement changes. Why can’t DTG be like this DTG Matt.
They know about it, they have spoken about it in streams, but they just don't fix it or not properly. It's the same with z-fighting on Xbox and the ongoing blurry texture issue.... Solutions for blurry textures and optimization even has to come from modders/3rd party dev, so I say DTG is incompetent and lazy at the same time.
Easy answer here. Those type of games using their own proprietary audio engines (really expensive stuff) or 3rd party audio engines like WWise or FMOD (also way to expensive to being used in TSW). Those engines have way more flexibility and possibilities to do audio than UE4 itself can provide. Loops are the things we need to use in TWS for the type of continuous playing sounds. It then depends on the available recordings or sources if you can make a seamless loop from it or not. Especially swelling sounds, like the ones produced by air pressure (including horns), and by any types of motors that will mostly not spin at a constant speed for longer than a few ms, are hard to loop when you not have any constant and long recording of it. These are then the ones you can hear in TSW often. And there is a different problem coming on top on consoles and that is the compression that is needed. Compression can shorten a loops unwanted about a few samples or even milliseconds and that then destroys the intended loop cue points (basically start and end) what ends up in pops and crackles. The latter could be solved by setting the compression quality to 100%. BUT since we have tons of audio for all the trains to carry around while playing the game, it would eat up way to much RAM what then ends up in more blurry textures or crashes.
One thing I’ve always wondered is whether it is possible to edit these in the console builds after the port from the PC dev build to tidy them up after the audio compression. I know some of the devs doing the audio setup won’t have access to the console builds directly but could DTG’s audio team do that or is it just not possible?
Not that i would know how. To edit audio it needs to be uncompressed. When you open a MP3 or AAC in a Audioeditor like Wavelab it will be decompressed when opening and compressed again when saving. I'm sure when i save a loop as AAC or MP3 with Wavelab it will be fine (pro Software though) but the decompression on the consoles destroys it again. And not that you can stop UEs cooking process from re-encoding audio files even if they are already compressed.
It should be more acknowledged, I agree, although it's not just console exclusive issue, but PC / Steam also. Right on the money with this comment. Also unless you're wearing headphones and 120% focus with the audio file you're working on when trying to get it loop smoothly, you will miss out on those possible "spikes" either at the start or end of the audio file. If the recording is not clean, the rough edges need to be smoothed and ironed out so that they don't *POP* in annoying audible manner. I'm quoting my old post about audio popping: "I feel this popping is awfully bad on Kassel - Würzburg route specifically because you sit in a trapped vacuum in dark tunnels listening to your comfy humming cab while observing your gauges and signals. There's simply no escape from it and I'm deeply bothered by it" Even TSG with their phenomenal and my favorite loco in the game, Expert 101 suffers from constant 8 sec looping audio popping at high speeds. Now with their upcoming LZB fun route Schnellfahrstrecke: Nürnberg - Ingolstadt the Expert 101 is highlighted a lot and contributing heavily to that route. Now would be a perfect time to iron out that annoying audio popping that appears at speeds +170 km/h... I don't want to derail this topic, but here it is... Spoiler https://forums.dovetailgames.com/th...t-audio-popping-issue-at-higher-speeds.94438/ DTG Lukas Please, I hope you guys at TSG are aware of this. Your feedback on this matter and how to fix it would be greatly appreciated.
I call BS! I'm a musician, I worked my whole life with loops and it's not that hard to make a continuous loop of an engine. What I do know is that if you let me make TSW, the audio will be top notch. The problem is that I'm not familiar with making video games which means only the audio will be top notch and the game itself will be very bad. That's what I'm assuming is going on here but the other way around. Don't blame the tools, blame your knowledge of the tools you use. You can tell me stories on why performance in TSW is not on par with my expectations and I will believe them, but don't tell me stories on why the audio sucks because I will call you out on it. They fixed it once so they can fix it again. Fix the audio instead of telling us BS stories on how difficult it is to make a simple loop. If you need 120% focus to cut loops you admit not knowing what you are doing and are just guessing. The solution is simple don't let developers do the audio because it's not their expertise.
There are trains in the game without those popping sounds, also there are trains with the problem, but less loud and annoying. The 375 from Firefly is mentioned many times already for the good sounds, Firefly also did good work on the performance side of things, so it proves there can be done something, when the right knowledge is there. About the costs for audio engines, there are many studios, also smaller ones, using FMOD or other engines in their game. It's not really acceptable to release broken products, because tools to do it right are expensive. DTG has a history of never fixed issues, where fixing is possible. The question still remains, why can Firefly (modders and now 3rd party dev) fix issues, DTG was not able to fix?
Yeah, waited for that comment. Thankfully you already said you have no clue how video games work. Music is a totally different manner. Making good loops for music purposes is easy (i know that because i did a lot too). Looping swelling motor sounds is a completely other topic and not that easy (you are allowed to prove me wrong with real world examples though). Because it is free for small game devs. But DTG is not small enough to get it for free and costs the ~15k$ per DLC per year. WWise is even more expensive from what i know. Developing a completely own audio engine might get in the millions range of costs. Not sure if DTG could afford that (i don't believe so). Often modders can do things DTG can't do. Modders mostly ignore set restrictions for a game they mod for. Modders also mostly mod for PC only where they can ignore those restrictions. Also they have no time restrictions like a company has. If you can spent unlimited time into something (nothing specific) you will get better results. If a profit driven company spends too much time into something the profit flies away and if they do it constantly the company will go broke over the time. I know people are seeing that different from outside a company and as a customer, but higher quality does not automatically produce more profit, it simply costs more time for doing it (that's a bad thing though, honestly, but that is how the world works). I personally have some experiences with that and tend to not overdue things because of not having any benefit from it. Modders can ignore all that, they are doing it often for honor. But honor is not filling the frige or pay the bills.
I got your point about modders and the time they can spend on stuff doing it right, however Firefly is now a dev too and they were able to found a solution for blurry textures, where DTG was working on for quite some time. I totally understand there has to be some balance between perfection and the costs of things for a company, but the quality of TSW does become worse and worse, to the point where I don't buy new DLC anymore. And even worse, GWE remaster has blurry textures as soon as I enable WCML, now 2 train DLC will be released for this route, but what is the point of buying them as I have already blurry textures without them? On this moment the balance is wrong in favour of rushing releases and not on perfection or do things right. At least there can be a better middle between those 2 things. And btw, this is not any personal attack towards you, to be honest, I appreciate you answers and explanations!
No clue about the blurry textures stuff and how to fix that. I never really seen them when playing TSW on my PS5pro nor on PC. And i wouldn't shrink down all i said to just the blurry textures problem. That is just one of lots of other things that need hands on while developing. Who knows what Firefly has been done differently. Maybe they use way less textures, what is a good thing but costs way more time to create the assets then. Maybe something DTG could improve (no idea, really). I'm working on something atm where also shared textures are a big thing and it runs way better than the usual DTG route. But again, i can't say something about that and why it is as it is. Has probably to do with the way how those routes are created, the fast pace in that they are created, and the amount of different people/companies/departments that are working at the same time on it. All that causes "issues" in the optimisation parts i would say. If only one person is creating a route, that person or a maybe small team can handle that way better than when 50 people working at the same time. That's how it is. Normally, and done on the big AAA games, after the creation of the map there is a huge and time consuming (often a year or so) optimisation pass going on, with hundreds of people working out the performance. Something that is not happening on any TS as you can imagine. There is simply no budget for such a huge process. It has to be working with the first pass of doing things. And yeah, that's really tricky and tends to gain issues. And to be clear, i'm not saying that all is fine, no, definitely not. And i know DTG is trying to improve these things. But that is nothing that happens over night. That can take years or some things might never being done because they can't find the cause. TSW is still not a title with AAA budgets and will never be one. So compromises have to be done here and there.
One of the things Firefly has done, is lower the texture resolution for places where high res is not needed. They did this for their own route, but also for SEHS. This seems to save quite some MB's. DTG want to try this also for other routes, but they have to do this per route. But from what I understood, this knowledge is not yet shared with other developers, otherwise you should know everything about what they did, right? So this is what you explained already with a lot of people working on the game, but it seems without sharing important information and a lack of testing / quality control. I understand the budget side of things, but when people are starting to refuse buying the game / DLC's, because of the lack of quality, the problems will become bigger for DTG.
