Exclusive: Ever wondered how the car engine sounds you hear are recorded and put into the game? As part of our behind-the-scenes tour of developer Turn 10 Studios, we got to see first-hand just how it’s done for incoming Xbox 360 racer Forza Motorsport 4.
We wanted you to see too, so we recorded a video. Ear plugs at the ready?
Bigger game development budgets now means that no stone (or car) is left unturned in the quest to make the best racing game possible. A few weeks ago we found ourselves in the middle of Redmond, Seattle to listen to cars being recorded in a garage for Forza Motorsport 4.
Each car is revved to the hilt and recorded using microphones and a dyno to record engine output. That’s the machine you can see in the video above.
According to Creative audio director, Nick Wiswell, the difference between a normal recording, and a dyno recording is such that it is essential to go through the effort of getting each car into the garage, where the sound of wheel spin, locked brakes, tyres pressing into the ground and more are grabbed.
Doing it this way records “far more detail than they way they were done before,” Wiswell says. It’s one heck of an effort – over 1,000 cars have been recorded in the Redmond-based garage.
The team have even given fans of the game a chance to have their own cars recorded – having posted messages on automobile forums asking nearby residents to bring along any car with “a cool engine sound.” It works.
We were watching a Subaru WRX STI being recorded, but it wasn’t long before the car park was slowly populated with Chevrolet Vipers and the like, owned by said forum users. After all, who wouldn’t jump at the chance to have their car in Microsoft’s biggest racing game?
