Crankcase Audio Inc. presents…
Realistic Engine Virtualization
Crankcase Audio Inc.
Who are we?
• John Twigg: Software Engineer
 Queen’s Electrical Engineering
 Piranha Games; Blackbox Games; Criterion Games; United Front
Games; London Investment Bank
 Currently working in mobile social casual games
• Adam Boyd: Sound Designer
 SFU School for the Contemporary Arts (Film, Communications)
 Electronic Arts Canada, Blackbox Games
 Currently freelance (Blur, Spyro, Modern Warfare 3)
Together we have over 18 years of experience in game sound design and engineering specifically focused on the creation of believable engines
What is Rev?
• It is a vehicle engine simulator built
specifically for games that captures and
reproduces the character of an acceleration
ramp
• REV includes:
• A PC tool providing easy spectral analysis, engine
cycle tracking and playback in a simulation
• A cross-platform runtime component
Where did REV come from?
• White papers concerning musical instrument
modeling and speech synthesis;
• Investigation into spectral analysis and
additive synthesis;
• Inspiration from granular wavetable synthesis
software such as Reason: Malström
Why choose REV?
1) Prefabricated solution to a complex problem
 Representative of two years development time - many have tried and failed,
or stalled in their attempts (i.e. Rockstar, unnamed audio middleware
developers)
2) Significant end-user time savings
 Simulation supports rapid iteration – very low turnaround time
 2/3 reduction over traditional loop model building
3) High quality sound
 Demonstrably superior to loop-based models (increased aggression and
believability)
 Competitive advantage (your engine sounds don’t have to hide in the mix)
4) Simplicity of implementation
 User friendly tool, easy for a junior sound designer to master
 Simple ‘loopless’ model (fewer moving parts means fewer voices)
 Full runtime source distribution (easy to customize, easy to debug)
What is included in the REVruntime?
• Plug-in style design
 Graintable player in two flavors
 Single Ramp model (acceleration ramp only, filtered decel)
 Full model (accel, decel, idle and pops)
 Audio Engine Simulator
 Upshift/downshift patterning
 Clutch modeling
 Pop simulation
 Physics Simulator
 Vehicle weight
 Braking force
 Engine torque
Detailed tech brief
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ADPCM 3.7:1 data compression ratio
Butterworth Filtering
Notch Filtering
Multithreaded plug-in style architecture
Currently embedded in DirectX
STD C++ lib dependencies
Current CPU usage: 0.96% of 2.7 GHz core (single
ramp)
• Memory footprint: 4Kb for Single Model, 8Kb for
Full Model