Com-Central.net

Wow another month has flown by already and it's time for edition 3 of the developers diary. Most departments are currently involved in long term projects still running from last months diary.

One of the biggest areas we have some major work happening in is terrain. We currently have 2 pc's working 24/7 creating the calculations necessary to build the terrain data for the entire continental US. This will take about 2-3 months, I've seen some preliminary tests on the sort of terrain this system is going to develop and I can tell you my jaw dropped. The elevation resolution is something that I have not seen another sim come close to, low level flying is going to be extremely interesting. We should have some more information available on this area in the next developers diary on these very exciting developments.

The Flight Model department continue to make great progress, the airframe data for the T38 and T6 is now complete and being implemented into code. The power plant division of the FM department is also making very good progress with implementing extremely detailed modelling of inlet losses including over and under pressures created by disturbed air when flying through a jet wash or effects of a blast. Again this is a huge leap forward in realism.

We also have our weather guru (a former USAF weather modeller) tearing apart the weather engine again in pursuit of the ultimate level of realism.

You will now notice a press release on the main Fighterops page, with what many of you have been waiting for, an estimate of when we hope to release. This is fairly general right now, and it's still very much early days, but at least it does give you a basic time frame which we will update as we progress. [url="http://www.fighterops.com/pressrelease.htm"]http://www.fighterops.com/pressrelease.htm[/url]

This edition, the Sound department was the lucky winner of the department spotlight.


[EDIT] Have received Rico's updated sound department spotlight and it now has it's own post. I'm sure you'll agree a very thorough and entertaining report, which shows Omar's enthusiasm and attention to detail. Great job as always bud.


My name is Omar Torres. I'm 30 years old and a single father with a beautiful 11 year old daughter. I currently live and work in the major Atlanta metropolitan area, located in Georgia, United States.

By day, my primary job is a Windows Systems Engineer for one of the largest credit transaction companies in the US. We develop software and provide consumer credit transaction processing for large financial institutions, ranging from national banks to cellphone providers, and more. I support over 150 Windows 2000/2003 servers in a very high impact environment, 150+ including Active Directory, Exchange mail, server performance and maintenance, building new server hardware, performing hardware upgrades, and maintaining tight security within the network infrastructure. I have about 8-9+ years extensive experience in Information Technology, designing and supporting network infrastructures, and building and supporting enterprise-class server hardware for Windows server based environments.

By night, im a musician/composer/sound-designer/mix-engineer/producer. I've been in the music industry for over 15 years experience in multi-track digital recording systems, digital audio editing and manipulation, sound-fx design, as well as extensive skills in programming synthesizers and samplers. This includes a deep understanding and working knowledge of multiple forms of synthesis, including analog subtractive, phase modulation, frequency modulation (FM), additive synthesis, wavetable synthesis, granular synthesis, digital sampling and editing, and more. I've spent the last 5+ years of my entire music career focusing on the engineering and mixing side of music production. Much of this focus pertains specifically to quality of how things sound, not necessarily the actual music or harmonies written.

This process is crucial as it I the key factor in the overall "sonic" quality of the final product.

Over the years, I've enjoyed both a private and public success with my time in the music industry, including having worked on several album projects for legendary electronic-industrial artists Skinny Puppy, film-score work for Sony Film's "Underworld", sound-track music for "The Matrix" DVD documentaries (included in the 10-box DVD set), original music score for Showtime's "Land of the Free" (30-minute made for cable movie special) and a myriad of independent remixes, 12"s and compilation releases under various solo projects and collaborations. I've also done commercial work for various companies such as Verizon, Wendy's, Adidas, Sony, Citigroup, and more. I've also spent a number of years providing studio technical support and consulting for artists such as Hans Zimmer, Dre3000 of Outkast, Danny Lohner of NIN fame, Stevie Wonder, Kenny Rogers, Orbital, and others.

PROJECT INVOLVEMENT:

I originally joined the FighterOps team back in Spring of 2004, at which time the project was still under it's original implementation design as a continuation to the Falcon series for OIR under what was then known as G2 Interactive. I joined the team with the intentions to bring my level of expertise to the flight simulation community and to try and help realize the next level of realism in sound for PC-based flight simulation technology.

Despite the many difficult challenges the team faced over the course of the year, the FighterOps team has evolved into a incredible pool of talent and determination, with one common goal: perfection. With that comes the teams patience and understanding to achieve that perfection. This is not a project we plan to rush.

SOUND DEVELOPMENT:

My current role in the FighterOps project is heading and managing the sound development department. The department's primary task is to develop, design, and implement all various aspects of sound, including but not limited to:

All in-simulation sound effects, aircraft sounds, vehicle sounds, ambient/weather sounds, weapons and combat sound-fx, voice-over communications and all comms.

Our primary goal is to design and implement a sound-fx system that will consist of a combination of actual live recordings and digital recreated/synthesized sound-fx's. Another main goal is to create our own customized real-time audio effects and processing systems within the simulation that allow us to recreate many of the aspects of sound involved in flying a fighter aircraft in real-time, rather than using static, repeated sound loops. This approach allows the sound to behave, adjust, and react to the environment, as it does in real-life. This allows us to control and effect how sound reacts based on conditions such as distance, altitude, temperature, and other real-world factors. Working directly with our development team, we already have layed the ground work for some of these amazing capabilities and more. With this real-time direction, we also have the ability to induce weather and atmospheric based factors into things such as radio communications, wind-distortion and resistance caused by the air-frame, and more.

Careful attention to detail is just one of our top priorities and is being applied to every aspect of our sound development process. We are confident that with the right sound system, FighterOps will bring you as close as possible to "feeling" and "hearing" what it is to strap yourself into the cockpits of today's modern fighter-jets.

INSIDE LOOK:

As an addition to the spotlight, I've provided an inside-look at my current working studio where most of the development work for FighterOps will take place. This is my privately owned studio that provides a state-of-the-art digital recording and editing environment for just about every project I am involved in. It is primarily a more computer-based studio recording environment with more a focus on virtual instruments, plugins, synthesizers and software, rather than traditional acoustic and electric instruments. A few synthesizers are still kept in the studio for specific tasks and purposes as well as a controller for triggering and playing virtual instruments, samples, and sound-fx.


The mighty portable "solid-state" recorder. This is what we are using to capture all field location recordings. As you can see in reference to the CD next to it, it's not that big. It uses CF cards to record audio straight to .wav or .mp3 files. It has a USB 2.0 port on the side so you connect it to your system, and the CF card shows up as a drive, and you just drag the recorded audio data over to your drive.


Furman power supply (provides clean power to all the gear), central-station monitoring device (gives me single volume control for all sets of speakers, talkback mic, metering, etc. etc.), and the patchbay, which allows me to wire any piece of gear anywhere in the studio without having to go behind the equipment (or what I call the rat's nest).


The studio. I have 2 18.1" Flat panels in dual-head mode on the main system and a 3rd 15.1" Flat panel that is connected to a laptop (in a docking station) that is used strictly for video/film playback when I'm scoring music/audio to visuals. Of course, no studio is complete without the lava lamp


My cockpit/office/meeting area. Yep, this is where my ass sits when im flying, researching, documenting, or meeting with everyone over TS. You can see the small little Athlon64 shuttle system I have on the floor that powers this system and my coveted TrackIR 3 Pro. system has a 9800 Pro with 1GB RAM, 200GB HD, and a fast ass athlon64 processor (3500+).


The "donkeys" of the studio. This is the horsepower of all my digital audio work. The bottom 4U rack is my custom Athlon64 (4000+) with 2GB RAM, 4 (yes 4) 200GB SATA HD, dual video output, Iomega REV drive (for backups, and 12X DVD-RW and 2 highly specialized DSP cards for digital audio processing. This is where I do 99% of all my digital audio work. Above that is a dual-processor Mac G4 that I only really use for compatibility purposes when working with clients that only use Mac's. Other than that, it does nothing more than sit around and look pretty. Next up is an old Korg Wavestation SR (synthesizer), great for ambient/film/sci-fi/movie sounds and effects. Then is my 8-port MIDI interface, allowing me to interface with all kinds of external synths, controllers, drum-machines, etc. etc. Then last are my 2 audio interfaces. This is where all the digital signals get converted to analog and out through normal 1/4 connectors to go to my speakers. Small, but very pricey. These pieces are crucial to having great sound quality. Having cheap converters gives you cheap sound, great converters give you great sound.

Well, hope that gives everyone a little insight into the back-end of the sound-design process and the gear behind it all.

Hope you enjoyed it,

Dirk

Wow, that dude has some serious hardware in his den!

Hello everyone!

This Saturday (Aug 6) at 7AM EST (1100 GMT) I will be holding a Team Speak session for Area 51 members. I am scheduled for a 2 hour meeting and hope to see many of you there.

In this meeting I will brief an air refueling mission just as if we were all going on the mission! This way I can hopefully answer many of your questions pertaining to pre-flight briefings and also air to air refueling. You may want to read over my two articles in the Area 51 Haole's corner prior to the meeting for a brief overview of each.

After the briefing demo I will hold a question and answer period for those interested.

I hope to see you all in Team Speak Saturday!

Cheers,
Haole

We have recorded the meeting, and the moment I get the recording back from our sound engineer I will post a link to it on this forums

Dirk