“I’m fairly confident in saying we possess the most high fidelity recordings of these cars in existence.”
“We did initially look and see if we could buy samples in, and
approached manufacturers,” Audio Manager Alan McDermott said in an
interview with the PlayStation Blog. “But it just wasn't good enough for us to do what we wanted to do.”
Instead of buying samples, McDermott and his team spent two and a half
years traveling the world to make their own audio recordings of all the
cars in the game. “We’ve been chasing these cars around the world,” he
says. “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.”
Each recording used at least 16 mics in each car and in some cases up to
27. “A lot of the time with simulation car games, the developer will
record a set of samples and then that’s it,” he said. “They use those
samples for both internal and external sounds. We didn’t do that. We
recorded bespoke samples for everything – exhaust, engine, cockpit.”
McDermott said that he’s “fairly confident” Evolution Studios now
possesses the most high fidelity recordings of these cars in existence,
and that BMW and Mercedes even asked for these recordings to replace
their own.
Driveclub launches October 7. A free "feature-complete" PlayStation Plus version will also be available at launch for PlayStation Plus subscribers ($50/year).
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