CFS2 Sound.cfg: Water touchdown sounds.

[aleatorylamp]

Hello Folks,

I'm trying to get water sounds to sound when landing on water with a floatplane (contact point type 4 in Aircraft.cfg), but there seems to be a special syntax for water touchdowns in the sound.cfg.

Defining a wheel (contact point type 1) and changing the touchdown call in the sound.cfg to call a water-sound, makes the latter audible, on land touchdowns, so it is not a matter of sound-file incompatibility.

I was wondering if anyone knows and could help.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Cheers,

Aleatorylamp

[aleatorylamp]

Hello Folks,

It seems a difficult issue, this water-sound business.
I tracked down a Microsoft document related to the FS config files, and the sounds appear to have a
flag parameter for the kind of surface that CFS2 supposedly detects, to activate a certain sound.

For water it´s Flags=8, and I´ve put it into the Ground_Roll and Touchdown sections of the Sound.cfg, calling
convenient watery sounds from the main sound library, as well as some watery touchdown sounds in the aircraft
sounds directory, but it all still remains silent.

Well...
Cheers anyway,
Aleatorylamp

[Shessi]

Hi A,

It's not something I know about that well. The doc you found, are you sure it's for CFS2 and not the FS series of sims. They are different and may not act the same?

Are you talking about an internal (2D/VC cockpit) water sound or external water sound?

I'm not on my Fs rig, so can't test, but I'm trying to think if flying boats/planes/amphibs give water sounds internally, and I'm not sure. As to parameters, I would think yes a combo of surface detection/contact point and sound call, as you say. The one thing I can say is that I would of thought you would have to use just float/skid contact points 4/2 and not wheel/1, so that the sound is connected to water surface AND a float contact point...try that.

I'll take a look in-sim tomorrow.

Cheers

Shessi

[aleatorylamp]

Hello Rami,

Thanks for your motivating comments! Let´see if we can further extend the experiments to slide-landings, and perhaps exploit water-crash situations to transform them into water landings.

Cheers,
Aleatorylamp

[Rami]

Hey guys,

A wonderfully informative threat, thanks for exploring this theory and developing it!

[aleatorylamp]

Hello Shessi,

Thank you for your answer!

The Microsoft config.file document I mentioned is not CFS2 specific, but seemingly a general one, so I don´t know if CFS2 is programmed to detect water with Flags=8.

Contact points I have, are defined as type 4 (floats). I only mentioned type 1 (wheels) because when defined as such and landing on land, any sound called, sounds. Of course, on water then, the plane sinks, but that is obvious.

With contact points defined as floats, they won´t sound on water or land, from within the plane or from outside.

It is strange that no Sound.cfg Left/Right/Centre Touchdown Section I have seen, includes flags or viewpoints.

Where flags seem to be used is in the Landing Roll sections, but CFS2 doesn't seem to react to Flags=8 (water).

Another thought: There is a system whereby a couple of gauges on the panel are defined, in combination with a Water Effect in the EFFECTS directory, which is called from the Aircraft.cfg, and this produces spray coming from the contact points when the plane taxis on water. Maybe a water-sound could be assigned to this spray effect...

I don't know.

Cheers,

Aleatorylamp

[Shessi]

Hi A,
Had a chance to check a few things. And no there's no internal or external splash sounds for FP/FB type ac.

If you look at a stock install of CFS2, you will see there are no FB/FP etc, and therefore the only references to water and aircraft in the main Sounds section is to an aircraft crashing into or landing on water.

The CFS2 developers had no idea that we would take it to where we are now, and so they gave little development room in the basic install. Having said that I have had an idea.

If you take a look at the sound config file for an aircraft there are entries for scrape points and fuselage sounds, the later entries refer to crash landings land and water, and are present in all ac sound configs.

Now a cunning plan! If you were to make the FB/FP ac scrape points at the points of your floats/hull (you'd have to experiment as they may get in the way, make them slightly higher), and in the ac sound config file you allied the scrape points to a customised splash/spray sound (in your main sim Sound folder), you possible would be able to get the water splash sound for your FB/FP??

The stupid thing is I've modeled loads of these type of ac and love 'em, but I'd not given that type of sound effect a thought!!! DOHHH!!

As far as a gauge driven sound is, yes I think (?) you my be able to do that. The DAP gauge is used in CFS2 to drive a visual float/hull spray effect, so there may be someone out there who would be able to do you a customised gauge driven sound. Personally I think the customised sound effect is the way to go.

I'll give it more thought....

Cheers

Shessi

[aleatorylamp]

Hello S,

I did a couple of short tests and trials with the A6M2 Zero (albeit futile ones), early this morning:

I noticed that the default Sound.cfg already had the Fuselage and Wing scrape points enabled, but they are inaudible
both from inside and outside, as you have already reported.

1) So far, for gear-up landings:
A) New additional Fuselage, Wing and Tail contact points placed in the Aircraft.cfg above normal contact points (type 1)
and having Fus scrp and Tail scrp sounds assigned, doesn´t work, as aircraft sinks into ground when loaded into the sim.

B) Additional Fuselage and Wing scrape points (type 2) placed in the Aircraft.cfg a little below the normal ones, with high
damage profile, with slide-landing sounds assigned to these scrape points, are inaudible from inside or outside.
They don´t work even using louder volume parameters, and also don´t react to flags such as those defined for the landing roll.

2) Then, so far, for water crash-splash:

As everybody knows, a crash on land causes an explosion sound, and on water, a splash, heard from outside, so obviously
the sim does detect this. However, I am still thinking how one could exploit this for flying boats or floatplanes - no ideas as yet.
Apparently there is a FS2004 Orlyonok A-90 Ekranoplan which has been made to work in CFS2 and FS2002, which seems to use
this sound method, but I haven´t managed to find this vehicle to investigate how they´ve done it.

If this could be managed, then it would eliminate the problem I mentioned near the beginning of this thread, that the current
implementation of water sounds using Aux1 and Aux2 scrape sounds also makes water sounds audible when landing on land.

But then again... how many water-plane pilots in their sane judgement would land on land anyway?

OK, ran out of time... Must rush!
Cheers,
Aleatorylamp

[p14u2nv]

Greetings Aleatorylamp,

I looked around and found this: FS2002 Orlenok A-90 Ekranoplan

https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/conte...-90-Ekranoplan

In addition, here is what appears to be an FS9 version, top of the page as listed below.

https://www.avsimrus.com/f/fs2004-ai...lan-12411.html

Hope it's a help my friend.

[aleatorylamp]

Hello Shessi,
Your plan for using scrapepoints to trigger alternative sounds is very interesting, and could be possible.
Also, the damage threshold for the scrape points could be reduced so as not to interfere.
I´ll see if I can make any headway.
Thanks!
Cheers,
Aleatorylamp

[Ravenna]

This is a fascinating thread.

[dvslats]

This is a fascinating thread.

Tis, isn't it. Very curious to see what happens.

[aleatorylamp]

Hello Folks,
Nothing new for now. FS2002 is of course not CFS2... After correcting the FS2002 Orlenok Ekranoplan´s static cg height for CFS2,
I´m afraid it is moving neither on land nor on water. Obviously there is some contact point problem, and until it moves, there´s no way of hearing any sounds other than the engines. Then, looking in the Sound.cfg, there´s only the usual splash sound call for falling into the water, and no trace of any other water sound calls. It seems that the issue hasn´t been addressed in the model.
Anyway, if I make any further headway on the Water-sound subject, I´ll post something.
Cheers,
Aleatorylamp

[hertzie]

After having read this whole thread I can only take my hat off and bow my head in gratitude and admiration for all the energy and time you guys spend in keeping CFS 1&2 alive.

Thank you so much from a simple flightsimmer,

hertzie.

[aleatorylamp]

Hello p14u2nv,

Thanks for the tip.
I was aware of the FS9 model, but as I don´t have FS9, I can´t use it, and I had seen the article on Flightsim.com,
...without noticing the download link for the FS2002 version at the bottom!

But I did now, so I downloaded it from their aircraft library.
What a coincidence: it actually appears on a page with a couple of my own Spasatel and Lun Ekranoplan models!

Anyway, I´ve got it now, and will investigate how they did the sound to see if I can adapt something similar to CFS2.
With any luck we may be able to get an outside-sounding water-sound.

Thanks for your help, Friend!

Cheers,
Aleatorylamp

[aleatorylamp]

Hello Shessi, Hello Ravenna,

Yes, it is definitely very interesting, this new business.

I got some similar information from Kdriver yesterday along the same lines - i.e. using scrape points.
He mentioned a paddle steamer built for the sim that works with water sounds, so it seems that we are going to get somewhere.
Let´s see if I can get some experimenting on the subject done today.

I was thinking of duplicating the 4 contact-point lines for the two floats (type 4) in the Aircraft.cfg, and giving
those a Type 2 scrape point designation, with a really high damage threshhold, to see if I can get any reaction
of the scrape points mentioned in the Sound.cfg.

Contact point parameter Nº. 13 seems to be a sound an entry, to designate the kind of scrape point desired, and supposedly this
will correspond to the label of the scrape point type to be used the sound.cfg.

Also, it looks like the left/right/centre Touchdown sounds only apply to land, and will probably be left in - and a mistaken land landing
could even be made audibly destructive.

To make things easier, I´ve taken out all the engine sounds except starter and startup, to be sure of hearing something it it comes through.


Anyway... More, later!

Update: (Later...)
No success as yet. I was using Aux1 and Aux2 scrape points for the duplicated floats as scrape points,
with Flags=8 to detect water, but it´s all mute
Also, I added Landing Roll sections with watersounds, also with Flags=8, but it´s no good either.
Incidentally, normal L/R/C Touchdown sounds are mute too, probably because it´s not wheels that are
defined in the contact points.

Update 2 (Later still): Slight headway?
It seems Flags=8 is not interpreted by CFS2:
Taking out all Flag=8 lines, something seems to be working:
I get water-sounds sounds from inside the plane (2D panel view) only, because Viewpoint=1, for the landing roll:
A) On land, with wheels defined (contact points Type 1), and
B) On water, with floats defined, (Contact points Type 4).
Now I have to try withwout defining the viewpoint.


Cheers,
Aleatorylamp

[aleatorylamp]

Hello Herzie,

Thanks for your good words, although being a hobby, it´s natural to spend energy and time on it, and I´m very glad indeed that the results of my efforts have been of use to other simmers!

In cases like the one described on this thread, the challenge is finding a workaround to bring it to function to an acceptable degree.
It´s like a puzzle with missing pieces which you have to try and rearrange, to achieve something as similar as possible to be useful!
That´s the fun, I suppose - it´s beating the limitations!

For me, it´s a tremendous piece of luck that the 20-year-old model-building program I still use is still good enough to produce some decent enough models for the 2 simulators, which are considerably more advanced than the simulators it was originally designed for.

More so, considering the improvements now possible on the models, thanks to several very helpful members, who know more about the more advanced and intricate aspects of the 2 simulators, i.e. the DP files, the special high-resolution textures using Extended Textures, and the superior Flight Dynamics. These people also produce some excellent, detailed sceneries which give the models a historical context, an additional important factor that makes this sim so enticing!

Cheers,
Aleatorylamp

[hertzie]

Hi Aleatorlamp, I think I can understand the why and how that you describe. I did a lot of CFS2 to FSX conversions and it was always fun to see how far you could come and how great it was to get help from other flightsimmers. Sometimes I still try if I can discover how to make gauges work in VC without having the sourcefiles. There was once a guy named Lazarus Starkweather and he helped me a lot, but I'm still stuck, mostly ofcourse because I have no knowledge of designing. But foddeling around with a model helps my brains for getting rusted.

All the best,

hertzie.

[aleatorylamp]

Hello again,

Duplicating the 4 float contact point lines to make scrape points out of them, interferes with the plane´s floating abilities,
and it sinks, so that´s no good. Then, I have had no success with Flags=8, so that also seems to be a waste of time.

However, it is interesting that values 7 and/or 8 can be entered in position Nº 13 of the float contact-point lines themselves,
(previously 2 and 3 for left and right gear), and this way the Sound.cfg can detect them as Aux1 and Aux2 scrape points,
and will assign sounds to them, in this case, water sounds.

For the moment, they are only audible from inside the plane, the 2D panel view, but at least it´s a tangible step forward.

Cheers,
Aleatorylamp

[aleatorylamp]

Hello Folks,

Thanks to input from Shessi and Kdriver I have had a certain degree of success in this endeavour.

Summing up after the water-sound experiments for water landings I have tried, it appears that neither Flags=18, nor Left/Right/Centre Touchdown sounds have any audible manifestation in CFS2, even using Viewpoint=1 or Viewpoint=2 to "force" the sound to be heard from outside or inside. Even the Landing Roll section was not audible, whichever Flags or Viewpoints were to be defined.

The only thing that CFS2 seems to recognize is assigning values 7 and 8 for Aux1 and Aux2 scrape point sounds in Aircraft.cfg Contact-Point entry Nº 13:

//13 Sound Type: 0=Ctr gear, 1=aux.gear, 2=Lgear, 3=Rgear, 4=Fus scrp, 5=Lwing scrp,
//......................6=Rwing scrp, 7=aux1 scrp, 8=Aux2 scrp, 9=Tail scrp
//
//.........0......1.....2........3......4....5....6 ....7....8...9...10....11.12.13..14..15
point.0=4,9.5000,6.000,-6.50,1575,0.0,0.54,0.0,1.0,2.5,0.88,0.0,0.0,8,0.0, 0.0
point.1=4,9.5000,-6.00,-6.50,1575,0.0,0.54,0.0,1.0,2.5,0.88,0.0,0.0,7,0.0, 0.0
point.2=4,-7.760,-6.00,-5.95,1575,0.0,0.54,0.0,1.0,2.5,0.88,0.0,0.0,7,0.0, 0.0
point.3=4,-7.760,6.000,-5.95,1575,0.0,0.54,0.0,1.0,2.5,0.88,0.0,0.0,8,0.0, 0.0

This allows the CFS2 Sound.cfg to play selected water-sounds, albeit for interior sounds only, i.e. 2D Panel and Virtual cockpit views.
No combination whatsoever yielded any positive results for water sounds to be audible from outside the plane.
Nevertheless, I suppose one could say this is a reasonable degree of success.

I chose the Watrlnd1 and Watrlnd2 sounds, combining them with the left and right touchdown sounds from the FS98 Catalina Flying Boat, which I renamed to watrsndl and watrsndr. The combination of the two I felt sounds better than either one on its own.
I defined Scrape 7 as left, and Scrape 8 as right, to get some degree of stereo effect into the speakers.
So, the lines in the Sound.cfg that made this work were:

[AUX1_SCRAPE]
filename=watrlnd1
minimum_volume=9000
maximum_volume=10000
minimum_speed=1
maximum_speed=55
minimum_rate=0.80
maximum_rate=1.60
link=AUX1_SCRAPE2

[AUX1_SCRAPE2]
filename=watrsndl
link=AUX1_SCRAPE3

[AUX1_SCRAPE3]
filename=watrlnd1
link=AUX1_SCRAPE4

[AUX1_SCRAPE4]
filename=watrsndl
link=AUX1_SCRAPE5

[AUX1_SCRAPE5]
filename=watrlnd1
link=AUX1_SCRAPE6

[AUX1_SCRAPE6]
filename=watrsndl

[AUX2_SCRAPE]
filename=watrlnd2
viewpoint=2
minimum_volume=9000
maximum_volume=10000
minimum_speed=1
maximum_speed=55
minimum_rate=0.80
maximum_rate=1.60
link=AUX2_SCRAPE2

[AUX2_SCRAPE2]
filename=watrsndr
viewpoint=2
link=AUX1_SCRAPE3

[AUX2_SCRAPE3]
filename=watrlnd2
viewpoint=2
link=AUX2_SCRAPE4

[AUX2_SCRAPE4]
filename=watrsndr
viewpoint=2
link=AUX2_SCRAPE5

[AUX2_SCRAPE5]
filename=watrlnd2
viewpoint=2
link=AUX2_SCRAPE6

[AUX2_SCRAPE6]
filename=watrsndr
viewpoint=2

If anyone should have any further suggestions or ideas to try out, of course they will be very welcome!

Cheers,
Aleatorylamp

[Shessi]

Hi A,
Well done fella!

A great bit of detective work there. I didn't really think that the M$ info was any good for CFS2, but the info got you thinking....

Well, water sound in 2 of the 3 areas (ie 2D, VC cockpits, but not external) is pretty good.

Have you tried hearing a crash landing or slide on landing externally?....nope there's nothing...only goes to a 'movie' when crashing. When gently slide-on landing land or water there' no sound externally, so unless M$ just didn't put a sound in (unlikely) or you find something they left and never finished I suppose there will not be any external water sounds, which is a shame. Have you studied the Fs9 sound set-up, there may be clues as to what the sound differences are between CFS2 and Fs9.

It is strange that they didn't put any sounds allied to slide-on landings, the sound of parts breaking on landing are there, but not for scrape points...or are there????

Cheers

Shessi

[aleatorylamp]

Hello Hertzie,

Ha ha! Modeling prescribed as best medicine against Alzheimer´s! Wonderful!

You´re right about working gauges in the VC, they would be nice, but I´m afraid
that my AF99 modelling factory is in this case a bit too much of a dinosaur to cope
with those.

Cheers,
Aleatorylamp

[aleatorylamp]

Hello Shessi,
So it seems there was some incompleted sound-related work that went into the CFS2 release... What a pity.

The M$ info has at least partially been interesting for our purposes, and for some secondary things...
Another thing I got out of it, but which also only works from internal views, was the existence of the
Tail Scrape Point (Pos.13 Value=9 in Aircraft.cfg Contact points):

//13 Sound Type: 0=Ctr gear, 1=aux.gear, 2=Lgear, 3=Rgear, 4=Fus scrp, 5=Lwing scrp,
//......................6=Rwing scrp,7=aux1 scrp, 8=Aux2 scrp, 9=Tail scrp
//
//..........0......1.....2........3......4....5....6 ....7....8...9...10....11.12.13..14..15
point.10=4,-7.760,0.000,-5.95,1575,0.0,0.54,0.0,1.0,2.5,0.88,0.0,0.0,9,0.0,0.0

Initially I had expected it would be an External Sound, given the Heading that begins with an "X"...

[XTAIL_SCRAPE]
filename=ssTouCC // (a central touch-down sound)
minimum_volume=9000
maximum_volume=10000
minimum_speed=1
maximum_speed=55
minimum_rate=0.80
maximum_rate=1.60
link=XTAIL_SCRAPE1

[XTAIL_SCRAPE2]
filename=watrlnd2
link=XTAIL_SCRAPE3

[XTAIL_SCRAPE3]
filename=ssTouCC
link=XTAIL_SCRAPE4

[XTAIL_SCRAPE4]
filename=watrlnd1
link=XTAIL_SCRAPE5

[XTAIL_SCRAPE5]
filename=ssTouCC

But no way... disapointingly, this doesn´t react to viewpoint=1 or Viewpoint=2 either.

It does, however, improve the variety of the sounds played, but is probably of no use for a float-plane
without a tail float, because it would add a central wake from a non-existing central tail float.

The M$ also indicated that from a sub-list of sounds (2 to 6 in some cases) with extra .wav files to combine in a certain
section, sounds are selected at random, so repeating sounds like I did is pointless, unless one were to bias the sound
combination in favour of one of the several sounds to be used.

Anyway, the result is better than nothing.

Incidentally, the FS98 Water Sounds that Mike Hambly put into his FS98 Sandringham Flying Boat, (which seem to
go with a FS98 PBY Catalina too), are one of the best sounding water-landing sounds I have come across. In his
Sound-Readme he does mention that all sounds are his, except for the Water sounds, but I haven´t found the
original author (yet).

Interesting that you say slide-on landings don´t have a sound either. I´ve never tried that...
I wouldn´t know about FS9, unfortunately, as I don´t have it...

Cheers,
Aleatorylamp

[Shessi]

Hi A,
All interesting I think. Would be good to talk to those who originally worked on CFS2, it would so easy to answer the many questions!

I'll have a comparitive look between CFS2 and Fs9, and see if there's anything useful.

And I must take a look at MH's water sounds, good to have choice.

Cheers

Shessi

[rohan]

Maybe it is irrelevant to this discussion, but I have been looking at a lot of planes that claim to use Mike Hambly's water sounds, and have found very few. That is, when I open the downloaded files, they contain no files called anything like "water" or "splash", despite the fact that the sound.cfg calls such files up. Perhaps this means that any water sounds you are hearing are actually default files from the simulator.

However, I did find 4 files at flightsim.com which do contain files with such names, and which have reference to these files in the sound.cfg. Perhaps these files will be useful to your discussion -

pscfloat.zip

ba_wp.zip

cubfp2k.zip

teal25v2.zip

HTH,
Ro