I must say I was extremely excited about Twotter, but after reading comments about the sound and the responses on Aerosoft forum from the project manager, I decided to stay away from it [for now] and spend more time in Kodiak, which is absolutely superb (I could listen to that sound all day).
I do not need another AH-level of sound… the argument is that “ear-deafening loud” is realistic because the real twotter is that loud, but how many people want to have hearing problems because of flying in a simulator or lowering volume each time they fly this plane? Are we also going to sell devices to physically punish people for crashing their virtual aircraft because that is more realistic?
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Not to mention in the real world you have head phones where the engine sound isn’t pouring on through them lol.
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This isn’t anywhere near as bad as the last two AH releases. It’s not overly loud and the sounds have quite a bit of depth. My only complaint about the sounds is the transition from idle to reverse and back, and since that accounts for about 1% of the amount of time I spend in a flight, it’s not that big of a deal.
Hearing damage? Are you seriously saying that?
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Yeah it’s really just the windows and wheels for me. (Along with that horrible launcher they force you to use that is beyond abysmal). They seem to be fixing the sounds soon although I wonder why, after all that time, they didn’t hold off on the release until they actually got the sounds they needed.
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Will it be possible to mod the Twin Otter to use the GTN750 in the instrument panel as its not supported out of the box from the developer?
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On the subject of the painfully loud (at times) engine sounds, I have some questions:
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I read from the dev that it is expected (based on real life twin otters) that you’ll “go deaf” if you “don’t change the setting during climb/cruise”. What setting is he referring to here? Our game volume? If so, how do you do this while flying? Are you supposed to go to options and turn down engine sounds for these phases of the flight? And if realism is the goal, which it seems to be, do real life pilots turn down the volume during climb/cruise?
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It seems to me, as was discussed when the AH Electra came out with ear splittingly loud engine sounds, that real life pilots deal with it by wearing headphones. The problem with very loud engine sounds in the sim is that they drown out the radio comms. In real life, the pilot is wearing headphones, which dampens the engine sounds (which means that they are realistically not as loud) and enhances the radio comms (and pilot-to-pilot comms?). How do we do this in the sim? Are we supposed to have engine sounds play through our desktop speakers and route our radio comms to our headphones? I think this might be supported in the sim (?) but don’t some of us have the engine sounds in our headphones too to avoid disturbing the rest of our household? I feel like I’m missing something here. I’m all for realism but I don’t see how we can realistically have loud engine sounds and still be able to hear other things. Do the test pilots for the devs not play their engines and comms through the same headset? Why don’t they see the “realistic” ultra loud engine sounds as a problem?
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I think the setting means engine rpm. It becomes noticeably less noisy with lower rpm. So I guess the loudest is during the takeoff and landing phases.
Anyway, I do not get it either why we cannot have similar sound level across all add-ons in the sim (by similar I mean slightly louder in airplanes that actually are louder in RL). That would make the most sense for the end-user.
We can always just decrease the engine sound in the game settings but that will decrease external and internal sounds. Some developers program their aircraft to have two very different levels for internal and external and that I think it absolutely the worst move. You adjust one sound level to be comfortable and when you change the view, the problem comes back (either too high or too low). In this way there is no way to adjust the sound to a comfortable level for the user. It really baffles me that some devs think this is the way to go.
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Telling users to adjust the game volume is a lazy excuse for poor sound design. Obviously it’s a loud cabin but the developer should fine tune the mix of the various effects to make an immersive, believable soundscape. Pilots generally have noise cancelling headphones. That doesn’t mean all sounds should be muted but there needs to be trade off between raw sound and gameplay experience.
The sound guy mentioned in the Aerosoft forum that they plan to tweak the audio in a future update. But the project lead keeps falling back on the “real Twin Otter pilots say it’s so good they ritualistically cut off their ears because they will never have such a revelatory experience with a sim again!” so I dunno not holding my breath. Real Twotter pilots aren’t sound engineers.
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There’s an option in the sounds settings to simulate pilot headphones - try it - it works a treat. This is the setting I use all the time.
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I wish they’d make a hot key for that. In X-Plane, some aircraft would have a headset laying in the seat. If you clicked it, you’d “put them on.” You don’t wear a headset while starting the engines, so I wish there were a simpler, quicker way to swap between the two modes.
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does this mean you don’t alter the sound settings on the PC at all? i.e. all done within the sim?
I’d certainly like ATC/VATSIM etc through headset and environmental sounds (engines etc) through the speakers
I don’t know, I did only quick performance check and I’m quite ok with engine volume. You are not supposed to set max RPM for whole flight. Yes it’s loud on max RPM. But as I said, it’s not a problem. Problem with AH aircraft was that ALL sounds including switches were just cranked up for no reason. Sound itself is also not that bad. Problem are transitions, which are really abrupt and weird. They need to work on them no excuses.
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If you mean that 2 second long squeal, I hear that the second I connect the battery.
For me, it’s the same issue I had with the Islander. Way too loud without headphone simulation, and I prefer not to use that option.
It’s a shame the volume control for engines only seems to affect the external view. If it altered both I would be happy.
As it is, I have to lower the volume enough that it makes ATC difficult to hear.
This is an aspect of the simulation I am happy to sacrifice.
And going by the number of users commenting on the engine sound implementation, I’m guessing I’m not the only one.
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It doesn’t really do what you’re looking for i think. Rather it simulates the sound as if you are wearing headphones in the cockpit - so you clearly hear ATC and radios but engine and external sounds are more muted - as if you were hearing them whilst wearing headphones. Give it a try - is just an option in the sim sound options. You don’t need to do anything outside of the sim.
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“We want realistic planes!!!”
Aerosoft implements sounds with a realistic noise level
“Sound levels are bad!!”
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Judging by the comments in here I was expecting to plummet straight into the ground on take off whilst covering my ears from the terrible screechy sounds of bad engine noises.
I had a small flight to Glasgow and it was superb. Really nice. The sounds seemed good to me, unlike the banderiante which seriously caused me to end the flight.
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I just did a flight from Kathmandu to Lukla and I have to say it’s a really nice plane to handfly, very stable. The sounds are actually really nice too, they just need a fix to make the transitions much more analogue and maybe tone down the engine volume slightly.
I’m somewhat new to twin engine turboprops and I noticed that I need to put the two throttle levers at different positions to get the same amount of thrust. Is this because of wind direction or something? I didn’t have to do this in the Baron or the King Air but maybe Asobo didn’t model it.
JayDee’s mod to use the King Air sounds takes care of the banderiante. It’s much more pleasurable now. I’m no sound expert, but with the Twotter the ATC sound is way too quiet over sound on the engines, and in external view the aircraft seems way too quiet.
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yeah thanks. I can already separate the sound through headset/speakers. Just thought I’d ask re the sim options.
True to a point, but then they might as well turn off all the other cockpit interactions sounds as you’ll never hear them. I don’t think you’ll hear wind buffeting the plane either.
Since I got FSRealistic I haven’t tried it with headphone simulation. If that all gets disabled as well, then its all rather pointless isn’t it.