The Star Citizen Live: Q&A episode featured the audio team discussing current challenges and future plans for enhancing the game’s immersive sound experience, including the return of iconic ship flyby sounds, development of realistic audio mode, and new dynamic audio features. They emphasized community engagement, ongoing bug fixes, and ambitious additions like ship horns and radio stations, underscoring their commitment to evolving the game’s audio alongside player feedback.
The Star Citizen Live: Q&A - Sounding Things Out episode featured a lively discussion with members of the Cloud Imperium Games audio team, including senior audio manager Phil Smallwood, director of audio technology Graeme Phillips, and newcomer Simon Gershon, the new audio director. The show began with some light-hearted banter about music and accents before diving into the core topic: the state and future of audio in Star Citizen. Simon, who joined the team just four months prior, shared his cinematic background and enthusiasm for enhancing the game’s immersive sound experience, emphasizing his commitment to community engagement and delivering high-quality audio content.
A significant portion of the discussion addressed community concerns, such as the disappearance of the iconic flyby ship sounds and the status of the realistic audio mode. The team acknowledged that the flyby sounds had temporarily faded due to backend changes and prioritization but assured viewers they would return with improved impact and presence. Realistic audio mode, a feature demonstrated previously, is still in development and requires extensive work to apply consistently across the vast game world. The team emphasized the complexity of integrating such features in a live, evolving game and refrained from promising specific release dates.
The conversation also covered plans to enrich the game’s audio environment, including adding more dynamic ship damage sounds, alarms, and immersive voice dialogue for distress calls and ATC chatter. The audio team is focused on enhancing the personality and presence of ships and vehicles, incorporating vibration and resonance systems to make players truly feel the in-game events. There was enthusiasm for community-driven ideas like ship horns and radio stations, with the team acknowledging these as exciting possibilities for future updates, although implementation poses technical challenges.
Legacy audio issues and the backlog of updates were candidly discussed, with Simon outlining a three-pronged approach: delivering high-quality new audio content, addressing and elevating legacy sounds (especially for ships and vehicles), and maintaining active communication with the community to prioritize fixes based on player feedback. The team is expanding to better manage these efforts and is committed to continuous improvement, including fixing bugs like inconsistent footstep sounds and enhancing environmental audio such as rain and ambient city noise.
The episode concluded with a call for community involvement, encouraging players to report audio bugs and share their desires for the game’s soundscape via the Spectrum platform and other channels. The team expressed excitement about upcoming events like the Ship Showdown and teased future audio enhancements, including better VoIP systems and immersive siren sounds for emergency vehicles. Overall, the session highlighted the audio team’s dedication to creating a deeply immersive and responsive sound experience that evolves alongside the game’s development and community input.