14 DAY TRIAL // Despite its delay to autumn of this year, the upcoming DriveClub racing experience from developer Evolution Studios and publisher Sony is still one of the most important titles for the PlayStation 4 and the team working on it is determined to make the experience as special as possible.
Gameplay and graphics are very important for the genre, but the two companies say that they are also aiming to revolutionize the way sound is being used and that their starting point was the decision to only use audio elements that were directly recorded over a period of no less than two and a half years.
Alan McDermott, the audio manager working on DriveClub, tells the official PlayStation Blog that, “We’ve been chasing these cars around the world. There aren’t that many Pagani Huayras available. They don’t just send them out on a whim. It’s in Japan on a Wednesday, it’ll be in Italy on Saturday… we chased them. We’ve gone all out.”
Initially, the team sought to use manufacturer-offered samples for the game, but they found that they were unable to match the quality requirements they had in place and would have been impossible to integrate with the gameplay and the graphics.
More than 16 microphones were used on each car, with the most important of them getting a complement of 26 or 27.
The developer adds, “We wanted to bring the engines to life. There’s a lot of competition out there that has already set the bar for us. We knew how good we had to be and that we had our work cut out. We didn’t want to be the same as our competitors – we wanted to take it a step further. It has consumed us completely for the last two and a half years.”
DriveClub will include separate sound recording for internal and external versions of the same sound and the team has even managed to introduce a surround sound mike in the cockpit, even if it took a lot of time and work.
The official PS Blog update allows gamers to listen to some of the recordings and see how they compare to the real world.
According to McDermott, companies like BMW and Mercedes are now asking to use DriveClub samples instead of their own.
The audio side of the game is crucial because it works with the core gameplay mechanics and the graphics design to immerse the player in the racing experience that will arrive on the PlayStation 4 before the end of the year.