In racing games, sound communicates speed, position and even cues the player to change gear – sound is just as important as graphic design.
But recreating the sounds of F1 isn't easy: F1 cars are rarely run and are effectively scrapped after a year, race weekends are incredibly loud with a variety of noises that are hard to control, and crashes are not something you can or would want to stage intentionally.
Codemasters' F1 24 launched earlier this week, so we spoke to the sound design team to find out how they recreated the championship's unique sounds.
In fact, many of the audio recordings in F1 24 were recorded on-site during pre-season testing in Bahrain, where all 10 teams completed three days of running in preparation for this season.
It's easier to record audio during pre-season testing because teams are a little more relaxed about time, at least compared to a race weekend.
“The audio for the Engine Bundle is all new,” explains Codemasters audio artist Chris Greenman-Ralph. [in F1 24]This includes transmission and turbo sounds, which are not always updated. [for each yearly release].
“We'll have one microphone on each sidepod and one right in front of the exhaust, then mix them together to create a complete bundle for each team.”
As mentioned above, it's important to note that this “bundle” also includes the sounds of the transmission and turbo, although none of these components operate in the same linear fashion as the engine.
“We use actual on-site recordings where we can get them, and we also have a library archive we can draw on,” adds Senior Audio Designer James Kneen, referring to the experience Codemasters has gained creating the official F1 games from 2009 to the present.
Engine audio must be updated annually to reflect the changing sounds of each engine – even if engine regulations don't change, each engine still sounds slightly different from season to season.
But that's only part of the picture: the pit stop audio, which you'll hear over and over again, is also crucial to the experience.
Brad Porter, audio director at Codemasters, added: “One of the great things we do in pre-season testing is for the teams to practice pit stops, so you can see them pushing the car into position. [pitstop audio] isolated.
“We have a very good relationship with the team and we work with them in the garage, so we might ask them to do some specific things.
“For example, the air blower that you hear in-game is a real air blower that the team uses. We record everything… and we record the wheel jacks, the sound of the mechanics turning the wheels to jack the car up, and the nose-on, nose-off sounds.
“We also record standalone revolvers.”
Ambience is another element of F1 24's audio design. The crowd and garage sounds that can be heard before the race and when the cars are parked in the garage or on the grid during red flags were recorded by the Codemasters audio team in various locations including Bahrain, Silverstone and Zandvoort.
If you play F1 24 enough times, you might even find some aural Easter eggs left in the game by the developers at Codemasters.
Neen explains, “We [team] In the garage, we try to capture the personality of our team.
“There's a lot of different things — Easter eggs and inside jokes and songs — so we try to recreate that. We play certain songs in certain garages, but we don't play them whenever we're in the garage.”
“It's almost like a nod and a wink to the team, trying to express their personality. It's always fun to do that.”
Because tire noise can't be captured in isolation, Codemasters recorded the squeal of tires on the road in a separate session to recreate the sound of a car being pushed to its limits.
And to recreate the sounds of crashes, Codemasters has a soundbank they built from sessions they conducted to recreate the sound of carbon fiber being crushed by an Armco barrier: A few years ago, the audio team acquired a piece of carbon fiber and crushed and bent it to increase the fidelity of an F1 crash.
Just as different assists and settings give each player a personalized experience, sound settings in F1 24 can also be customised for each player. For example, “Driver Mix” recreates the sounds each driver hears in their helmet. Codemasters achieved this by placing microphones inside the race helmets to capture audio from inside.
After recording the audio, the team then has to tie the sound to what the player is doing on the track, which they do by tying the audio to the laws of physics, so that if the car is accelerating, idling, decelerating or crashing, the game knows which specific audio to play, with a specific tone and pitch.
“There is audio designThere is also audio code“,” adds Porter, “the physical system is tied to the audio.
“There is a piece of software called Wwise, which is a third-party piece of software that a lot of other game developers use, that maps RPMs. [of the engine] Scale it to fit your car, find the point where your car says it's at 12,000 rpm, and everything will match up.
“The same goes for tires. [the software] We can see what the wheel slip is, how fast the wheels are rotating, all kinds of information you can think of.”
