On GT PLANET, a Gran Turismo news fansite and one of it’s biggest forums, there’s a consolidated wishlist of things wanted in Gran Turismo (http://www.gtplanet.net/forum/board/kazunori-yamauchi-qa/) and all the items listed are things I totally agree with. And the top item on the list by far, is the “improvement of sound”.

Of course I myself am not satisfied with the sound in Gran Turismo, and to the players out there I can only say, uum, I’m really sorry.

The things imagined and pointed out by players are really accurate, and though avid GT players probably know the history of sound in the current GT, I’ll explain the background or the history of methods used from the past until the present just in case.

In the first period, this is during GT1 to GT4 – so up to around 2003, we were recording engine sounds like this:

The car for data capture would be placed in neutral, and revved from idle to every 1000 RPM mark and held, with a number of microphones placed inside, outside, in the engine room, and wherever else needed. In the end, multi sampled data was made in this way.

Even through a simple method like this, you could tell clear differences in engine types, whether it be inline 4’s or 6’s, V6 or V8, etc. We could do things like recreate the moment when the cam would change in the Honda VTEC system, so back in 1997 it was an interesting method experimentally.

But having the car in neutral, means that aside from the internal losses in the engine its under almost no load, with only a small throttle opening. A car in a real driving state is much different. If you’re a driver, the conditions for a good exhaust sound for your senses is pretty clear, and though we could individualize the character of each car by sound, we did already recognize from back then that it was not truly the best sound for that car.

To be continued: