My Review Of The Sound In Battlefield 1

Hello to all!
Recently, Battlefield 1 was released for Xbox, PS4 and PC and I personally cannot stop playing it. However when I am playing it, I always love how the game sounds and am shocked at how the audio department at DICE have captured the ambience of WW1 extremely well. With the release being a AAA game, you are expecting to find close to zero faults in everything. This is definitely the case when it comes to Battlefield 1 as the audio has been created so well there are virtually no errors in the world when it comes to immersion and the feel of grittiness of WW1.

With the amount of time I have put into the game I can write for an extreme amount of pages for the audio and how great it all is. However I dont want to bore you all with my ramblings. I had a gaming session with the game whilst wearing a pair of Tritton 5.1 headphones which are designed for gaming, and I took notes during this session. Below is an excerpt of what I have written about the audio for that particular session.

Session Notes

Main Menu UI sound is very minimalist and music driven which works well for the game having it be calm before the storm of WW1 arrives. When war stories is selected from the menu a nice whooshing sound is emitted that is mixed below the music and gives a nice rumble to feel like you are flying towards the stories.

War stories 1:

Low rumbles to add effect of story when each text box shows up.

Great ambience transitioning from outside to inside big bess (Tank). The sound of the inside of the tank has been well captured as to what it would sound like inside a tank in battle.

Extremely effective use of reverb when inside vehicles. When the camera view is outside the tank, you can still hear everything that is going on inside big bess. This is well translated with the use of reverb as they have made it so the cannon and gunshots sound like you are inside the tank shooting them but also have a hint of reverb from the impacts on the outside of the tank. This is possibly to give the sense of extreme realism which works very effectively to make it seem that you are there shooting the tank. When you zoom with the tank you are able to hear the differences between the outside view and the aiming view of the tank. When you are zoomed in with the tank you can hear the reverb of inside the tank clearly. The environment is also mixed to this reverb making it even more immersing being inside the tank.

When you are on foot, the use of attenuation is accurately represented with the distance you will be able to hear an enemy from. You are able to easily pinpoint enemies just by listening for footsteps or voice lines that are randomly triggered whenever you are close by. When sound designers are making sounds they have to make sure they replicate what the sound of a certain action should be without this sound being overused and becoming repetitive. This is always a hindrance when it comes to implementing sound. This is why when you are designing sounds you must make multiple of the same actions of sound, but make them sound different. This is so you have variation when you are implementing the sound into the game. The sound designers have done this with multiple surfaces and objects to make it so impact noises are correct and consistently random. These sounds are sometimes placed into more less important areas where no one would usually go and put the most suitable sound there. You are able to tell the difference if you are that specific with your audio. However in a game where everything is run and gun most of the time you don't tend to look into these tiny bits of detail that are done for time constrained circumstances.

That is just a small excerpt of notes from a session of gaming on Battlefield 1. The sound designers have done an excellent job at representing the feel of WW1 and I cannot think how I can do it any better than they already have done. There has been a podcast with lead sound designer Andreas Almstrom and audio director Bence Pajor from EA DICE in Stockholm talking about everything they did to get the sound of Battlefield 1 to be as great as it is. Check it out below and thank you for your time here on my audioventure!




Stick around for more posts soon!

Diving Into Virtual Reality Audio!

Hello all!

Virtual Reality (VR) looks like it can become something amazing in the upcoming years and there are many parts of it that are still being explored. New technologies for VR are being made constantly. Oculus, HTC and Sony, have all jumped on the VR bandwagon. With new visual technologies being built however, audio is sought for in the VR space to immerse the player into the environment they are expected to be a part of.

There will be many blog posts in the coming weeks about some technologies that I will find that will interest anyone who wants to delve deeper into the depths of Virtual Reality.

Today I have found a microphone that has been called the "Ultimate Virtual Reality package." (Ramsey, 2016). The PIANI-SPS200 recording package has the ability to record in surround sound whilst being able to record a minimal amount of handling and wind noise. The microphone automatically records into what is called B-format. B-format is a audio file tape that is most commonly used in Virtual reality applications. This format in simple terms allows you to be able to control the sound that has the format within a 3D space, which when implementing into a Virtual Reality experience, is pretty handy.

An article from Audio Media International included a quote from the manufacturer which stated the following:

"As virtual reality continues to grow in popularity, users will expect the highest quality to keep them believing in their virtual environment. We believe that the combination of the SoundField SPS200 and the Pianissimo windshield is an ideal solution to create the immersive sound needed for VR."

This is already a big step for Virtual Reality and it is only going to grow in both popularity and technical aspects. Keep updated with the Virtual Reality Audio game right here on my audioventure!

-Sean Lewis

(Also I am still working on some projects that are taking a bit longer than usual. Keep updated both here and on www.seanlewis.audio for more!)


References:

Broadcast Production Equipment - TSL Products. (2016). TSL Products. Retrieved 14 October 2016, from http://www.tslproducts.com/

Cinela - Cinema, Electronics, Acoustics. (2016). Cinela.fr. Retrieved 14 October 2016, from http://www.cinela.fr/

TSL and Cinela introduce new VR recording package . (2016).Audiomediainternational.com. Retrieved 14 October 2016, from http://www.audiomediainternational.com/new-gear/tsl-and-cinela-introduce-new-vr-recording-package/05937

New Website Colour Theme and work piece!

Hello to you all!

I have been updating my website according to feedback from myself and many others. I have decided to take away the darkness of the website and brighten it up with a nice orange, white and light grey colour theme as this looks much better than just having a very dull background.

I have also uploaded a brand new project that I have been working on and can finally release to you all! It is a short horror film called The White Lady and the on set and production audio was done by both me and my friend Chris Tamblin! Take a look at the website for more information on that!

There are more workpieces coming to the website to keep updated  on my audioventure on this blog, my website and via my twitter - @Seanmlp.

Thank you for your time :)

-Sean

Getting back into the swing of things.

Hello to all!

I have been absent from posting updates for a while and I feel like I am doing this too much. However I have not been doing just nothing! I have recently finished doing post-production audio for a student film that I was part of making as the audio mixer. I finished the post-production work within a week inside a D-Control studio suite provided by Futureworks University in Manchester. This was a challenge to do however the length of the film (around 10 minutes) made this that bit easier to make a reality and the film now sounds great, and the director loves it!

I have also now updated my portfolio website (SeanLewis.audio) with a brand new project that I finished a few months ago which I am now proud to show you as it was under moderation my my university. I now have my full marks and I am happy to finally show you what I have done with the audio to the strategy game level template from Unreal Launcher. I admit there has to be some changes to some of the attenuation settings for some of the sounds however I have it locked down as it is now because I want to keep the final product true to its final deadline instead of tinkering it past its deadline.

What I am now doing is playing around with examples from the book Game Audio Implementation, to practice my skills within Unreal 4 and in general with coding. This is going to take me a while to get used to as I am also trying to get myself into shape so expect an update soon on how that is going! So far there is little progress, but soon I will be at least fit enough to go up a flight of stairs without getting out of breath :).

I will start to make weekly updates to keep myself active! I just need to start being a bit more productive.

Oh and I have also started up a YouTube Gaming channel (Yes shameless plug). You can find it here! It is just something small so it may not be updated a lot. But its something to do at least :D.

Keep updated both here and on my website for more projects from me and what I do!

-Sean

Quick Portfolio Update!

Hello to all!

I have been in the process of trying to create a suitable domain name for my portfolio. Recently I found out that you could request for a .audio domain name. So I managed to grab a simple and effective domain for the website.

The domain for my portfolio is now: SeanLewis.Audio

I am proud of this domain and am keeping this for the foreseeable future.

Keep updated with all my work on my portfolio and it will soon be updated with what productions II have been working on for the past year!

Stay Tuned!

- Sean

What's new now?

Hello world!

I have recently been working on multiple different projects. One of which is learning the basics of the C++ language. I created the basic program of showing the words "Hello world!". It is only a small step to start learning about audio implementation within the language but with learning about the basics of compiling and variables. There is more to the language then just that but I am still learning some basics whilst working on other projects. 

I have been busy on a film set for a short horror film called The White Lady. I have a second shoot day upcoming on the 21st, this will conclude the shoots needed for the film. The first shoot happened in the middle of a woodland park which set the setting of the films horror aspect. The location was next to a lake and for audio in theory this would be a problem due to some wind. However this was not the case in this shoot. The audio came out clean and is almost all useable when it comes round to the edit. 

For my video editing, I have been working on a behind the scenes project for a short film called The Heist which is also another short film I have worked on. The videos all follow a house style of interviews with the talents with some layering video layers of the crew working behind the scenes.
This is only a small section of what I am working on right now. There will be more separate posts in the future going into more depth about what projects I am working on. You can keep updated about everything right here!

Whats Happening Now?

Hello to all,

After my April break, I have now finished my second year at university and am looking into many projects to complete over this summer. This month on the 14th, I will be working on a horror film on my first late night shoot from 8pm till 3am. This is all in good practice as I am getting more and more comfortable with the recording equipment and booming film shoots.


I am also going to be working on my game audio skills in multiple game engines other than Unreal Engine 4. I will still be using Unreal 4 as my go to engine for game audio but I wish to broaden my knowledge in this field that I am very interested in! I will be learning both FMOD and Wwise to get knowledge of the industry standard of middleware, and also not to forget to mention coding in c++ to try to learn outside of the engine.


I am also going to be looking into creating a sound effects library, along with creating my own music beats with my own recorded audio. I do not own a drum kit to make my own authentic drum samples. However that is not going to stop me from being creative in how I will record these.


All this is going to be taking place over the next 5 months, and you will see it here first with what I am working on. Hope you guys will enjoy what you see :).



-Sean L.