The sound of the universe

I found some interesting videos (electro magnetic vibration recordings) of Jupiter.

This is so amazing. I wish we could have electro magnetic scanners in I:B which produce something similar.

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I think Limit Theory is going to have something like that.

How useful to gameplay adding something like it would be depends on how the developers want to deal with ‘stuff’ detection. Would be best to wait and see how the prototype works out first.

Not saying it wouldn’t be nice to see, but having a full scanning system with (presumably proceduraly generated) audio for absolutely everything would be a whole bunch of extra work.

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If you’re using some sound based radar, then you could simply use pitch (and volume to a lesser extent) for proximity and volume (and pitch to a lesser extent) for orientation, as if you’re using some sort of directional antenna. Then you generate a sound wave for each object in your sensors (except asteroids. If asteroids are made audible, they would probably give off a very weak signal audible in very close proximity to avoid making things confusing and loud) based on its properties (man-made objects should probably have a bit more artificial sounding sounds. Perhaps adding a bit of variation based on that object’s unique identifier near the end of the sound wave to make it easier to identify. They could even have slightly changing sounds depending on whether or not they’re using their weapons and thrusters, how damaged they are or how much energy they’re giving off/how visible they are). That will result in a system that could give you a vague idea about what’s going on around you. Not as good as a visual radar but it would certainly give you some easy to understand information (like “which planet is that”, “how close am I to that planet/station/player” or “are there any other ships around me”) quickly. And it would fit well with a “space is silent” theme to replace some of the ambient noise one expects during dogfights, changing the sounds you’re hearing into something more artificial when you are not in atmosphere, thus giving each place and each fight its own sound (although I don’t know how well it would work in large dogfights, unless the system also intelligently chooses to lower the volume of further-away or unimportant things when you’re in a large dogfight with lots of sound sources around you).

It’s not a very high priority item but it’s probably just some cheap calculations about volume and pitch of preexisting sound waves made client-side. Writing the actual code and creating nice-sounding base sound waves for each object is probably the hardest part. Maybe if Panu gets done with the soundtrack and sound design early, he could work on creating sound for something like that.

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Wow, to see that video again … I remember back on the old forums there was a discussion about sounds in space where this video was also used for demonstration purposes. It wasn’t deemed important enough or too costly by the dev(s) (iirc), but that doesn’t mean that everyone forgot about it. I think it’s fair to say that one of my ideas for the short story challenge on this site can be traced back to said discussion.

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“Sound does exist as electromagnetic vibrations.”

I *twitch* don’t know *twitch* how *twitch* to respond *twitch* to *twitch* that. *twitch*

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But Kichae, everybody knows that Lumiferous Ether is the medium through which light vibrations propagate and that ether Phonographs are perfectly capable of transforming those electromagnetic sound waves to actual sound waves. I mean, golly mister, they say that the next clockwork space boat they send on Jupiter is going to scoop up some of that ether in some cans so that the sound can be heard on earth when the cans are opened.

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Some things are so basic that Wikipedia will suffice:

Did I miss an edit or something? I don’t see that phrase anywhere >>

20 seconds in.

Oh, gotcha. Yeah…