![]() ![]() I must say that I have a propensity to pay more attention to tubeliners, so that is what this discussion will be centered on (and, actually, most of the GA developers have been doing much better than those for tubeliners). This is relatively minor though, compared to the lackluster speed with which certain developers have adopted FMOD in their aircraft. Though it is Laminar’s intention to integrate FMOD with scenery and plugins, no additional information has been offered about this since the initial FMOD documentation was published in May 2017. Though FMOD is considered by many to be the standard of X-Plane sound, it is currently only available for use in aircraft. The more parameters that the sound designer defines within FMOD, the more fine-tuned and precise the changes in sound can be in X-Plane. It knows where you are, and moves with you to give you the as-realistic-as-possible sound. For instance, the engine sound in the Cessna 172 changes when the door opens not because there is a separate sound that is supposed to play when this happens, but because FMOD understands that the door is opening and that it needs to adjust the amount of engine noise present in the flight deck accordingly. All of these, of course, are determined by the sound designer. ![]() Sounds inserted into FMOD interact with provided parameters, which reference certain datarefs provided by X-Plane. For those of you who may not know much about FMOD or how it works, here’s a brief rundown. The possibility of being in a three-dimensional sonic environment was something I had not considered. Though many were underwhelmed, and somehow still are, I was absolutely blown away. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting anything special, I had never heard of FMOD, and I assumed that it was just some proprietary sound engine that consisted if little more than a name Laminar developed in order to slightly enhance the hype over the incoming update of X-Plane. This is why, in November 2016, I was so thrilled when Laminar uploaded a video detailing the FMOD sounds that would be coming with the Cessna 172. Even in VR, if the sound doesn’t move according to the positioning of your head, the idea of being in a reality is completely ruined. Sound designers the ability to remove the screen between the person in front of it and the flight deck they are looking at. And now, with the introduction of FMOD, X-Plane has reached a similar point. Just like I said about student films, and even multi-million dollar productions, having good sound is what really immerses me into the world that a given director is trying to create. After all, we have had much larger fish to fry, and arguably still do, but with the introduction of FMOD in X-Plane 11, the soundscape of X-Plane has the possibility to become several times better. Of course BlueSkyStar has been making quality sound packs for aircraft for years now, but sound has never really been a top priority to most addon developers, and it probably wasn’t much of a concern for the X-Plane community. When it comes to X-Plane though, sound has never really been something that I thought about. I’ve realized that in order to be immersed in any form of media, the sound needs to be high-quality and as organic as possible. However, there has always been a constant that keeps the gate to the land of good films: good sound. Some are great, most are average, and some are terrible. ![]() In a university focused on arts, I’ve seen more than my fair share of student films. ![]()
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