Underwater hearing
Racer1
Join Date: 2002-11-22 Member: 9615Members
Join Date: 2002-11-22 Member: 9615Members
Most underwater games today either have a generic water sound in the background, or completely forego realistic water physics and allow you hear outside events as if they occurred in the open air.
I'd like to see (or rather, hear) something different. Who is to say that technology would not eventually allow us to hear in ways similar to fish? In water, sounds travel much farther and have much richer tones than we are accustomed to on land. A player (with appropriate stereo/surround sound headphones) could, through hearing alone, notice things that would have been otherwise missed.
How this could play out:
- Ambient ocean noise would bounce off rock formations and let the player "feel" that a large rock formation exists to the north, even though they cannot see it.
- Large animals and geologic events also produce sounds that carry miles. The player might notice a school of very large animals singing as they swim a mile away. Will we ever actually see them? Were they whales? Who knows?
- Provide a different level of immersion and perception if you are in a sub vs swimming in the open ocean. Maybe in the sub you would also hear submarine noises, making it harder to distinguish between them and outside noise. While out in the ocean sounds would be clearer, but perhaps not as powerful (since your wetsuit hearing tech is less advanced than the sub).
- Enhancements could be made to hear very low frequency sounds (similar to how whale sounds are played back), to find animals that only operate at those frequencies.
I'd like to see (or rather, hear) something different. Who is to say that technology would not eventually allow us to hear in ways similar to fish? In water, sounds travel much farther and have much richer tones than we are accustomed to on land. A player (with appropriate stereo/surround sound headphones) could, through hearing alone, notice things that would have been otherwise missed.
How this could play out:
- Ambient ocean noise would bounce off rock formations and let the player "feel" that a large rock formation exists to the north, even though they cannot see it.
- Large animals and geologic events also produce sounds that carry miles. The player might notice a school of very large animals singing as they swim a mile away. Will we ever actually see them? Were they whales? Who knows?
- Provide a different level of immersion and perception if you are in a sub vs swimming in the open ocean. Maybe in the sub you would also hear submarine noises, making it harder to distinguish between them and outside noise. While out in the ocean sounds would be clearer, but perhaps not as powerful (since your wetsuit hearing tech is less advanced than the sub).
- Enhancements could be made to hear very low frequency sounds (similar to how whale sounds are played back), to find animals that only operate at those frequencies.
Comments
Then you're swimming in deep seas and hear different sounds of maybe threatening fish