Contary to popular tabloid beliefs, sometimes we play violent games and think “Boy, I’m glad I don’t have to do this in real life”. The original Call of Duty’s Starlingrad mission springs to mind. Despite the fact we’d never want to go to war though, we won’t mind if your development team strives as much as it can to make virtual war as realistic as possible. That’s what Gaijin Entertainment has been doing for War Thunder. They’ve strapped a bunch of microphones to a load of WW2 era tanks to record every squeak, tick and roar. All in the name of historiacal authenticity.
The Gaijin sound design team visited museums in the US, Russia and Germany to get their hands on working WW2 hardware such as the StuG 40, PzKpf III, and Sherman M4A3. Using an array of thirteen microphones they’ve captured all the distinctive sounds created by these metal behemoths. The result being that you’ll be able to tell exactly what tank is about to roll over the hill before you even see it, provided your trained ear can tell the difference between a Sherman and a StuG.
These effiorts are going into War Thunder’s Ground Forces expansion, which will take the currently airbourne-only dogfighter sim and turn it into a true combined-arms combat simulator.
There’s no word on when the tanks will come rolling in, but when they do we’re sure you’ll hear them before you see them.