SimHQ.com - Motorsports Zone - Feature: Sim Racing Tips - Getting the Most Out of Your Virtual Racing Hobby

Like graphics detail, sound quality has an important role to play in sim racing, and not just for immersion. Certainly, the robust engine sounds in GTR are very exciting to listen to and add to the "adrenaline factor" in that title, but if you can't hear the tire traction noises you'll never truly be able to push the car to the limit. As we've said many times before, conveying all the motion cues and physical sensations of a real vehicle into a PC-based simulation on a static computer workstation is a challenging task. Many of the cues our body would use to operate a motor vehicle simply cannot be reproduced at a PC workstation. As a result, developers must employ other sensory inputs to compensate for those that cannot be recreated. Their choices are pretty limited: sight, sound, and force feedback being the obvious options. One of the biggest sensory input compensations that takes place is recreating the grip status of the tires. Since the tires are the car's only point of contact with the road surface (hopefully), managing their traction level is of primary importance to a driver. Since the best cues for traction status are unavailable to a sim-racer, hearing and interpreting the sounds generated by the game to convey the level of grip become critical to driving a virtual car at the limit. As such, you'll want to ensure that you can hear every nuance of tire traction sounds provided in a game title, as they replace the seat-of-the-pants sensations that your desktop PC cannot reproduce.

Now that we know the real goal of our sound setup, there are four ways to enhance your ability to pick out all the nuance of the tire sounds in a game.

The first is to go into the game's .ini file, and find the setting codes for tire sounds. In the case of rFactor and most other ISI titles, they're in your own profile's .plr file. Once you've opened your .plr file with notepad, scroll down to the sound category and look for a line that sets the sound level of "traction control." This is actually going to adjust the relative volume of your traction noises in the game, to include tire sounds. I have found that a setting of about 2.3xxxx works best for me. At the bottom of the sound category you'll also see some other volume settings for tire scrub that you can adjust if you desire. Save your changes (make a backup of the original .plr file first!), close the file, and crank up your game. If the sounds are not to your liking, alter the numbers until you get the desired relative level of tire noise. Over time, you may find your tastes changing, so be ready to adjust these numbers as you gain experience.


User Data Folders	plr Sound

Luckily for GT Legends drivers, this process has been greatly simplified by the folks at SimBin. In their Audio Options they have included a GUI that allows users to adjust the settings listed above from within the game interface. That's a very nice feature, and allows drivers to easily and quickly tweak the settings to suit their tastes. In GTL, I find that setting the traction control and skid sounds to roughly 150%-185% currently suits my needs.

The second way to tweak your traction sounds is to simply go into your audio settings and ensure that your special effects volume slider is up, while dropping down the engine volume to a lower level. You'll note in the screen shot from rFactor below that I have my engine volumes pretty low, and my special effects (to include tire noise) at a very high level. The goal is to bias the sounds in favor of the tires, while not losing the immersion of the engine sounds. Again, this will be something you'll have to play with in order to strike a balance that suits your tastes. Finally, when tweaking the audio settings of your game, you'll often find a slider bar for adjusting the total number of sounds produced. Usually the game engine prioritizes the sounds to your own car, which is good. But that won't be just one sound. Try setting the slider down to around 10-14 sounds, and see how that works for you. A lower number will have the added benefit of improving frame rates, but too few sounds and you might not get all the traction awareness that you're looking for.

rFactor Audio Settings

The third way to keep awareness on your tire sounds is through your hardware. In my personal experience, onboard sound via the AC97 codec has failed to impress me. Odd artifacts, flat tones and loss of sound channels can have a huge, negative impact on your ability to pick out tire sounds. "In sim racing, sound quality and detail are extremely important to driving consistent and fast." I found that by respecting the importance of sound quality to sim racing and plunking down some hard-earned cash on a quality sound card (in my case an Audigy 2 ZS), I was able to improve my lap times by picking out the audio depiction of my grip status on the virtual racetrack. I also achieved a side-benefit from my sound card — I saw a slight increase in frame rate on the graphics side of the equation when I installed my Audigy 2. Not a major improvement, but certainly better than taking a frame rate hit.

Finally, you've got to get the sound waves generated in the PC out of the case and into your ears in order for it to do any good. The sound depth and clarity of my Bose PC speakers are certainly gratifying, but typically I find that a good set of headphones will give you the best level of sound detail and let you pick out those subtle tire traction sounds without getting the wife too aggravated with all the racing engine noise drowning out her TV show.

Over the years I've found sound quality to be one of the most underrated aspects of our genre. In sim racing, sound quality and detail are extremely important to driving consistent and fast. Don't overlook it when you're getting ready to go sim racing.

Go To Page 4

Click here to go to top of this page.