Ambient Sounds
Waves, gulls, city hum, crickets and wind, depending on where you are.
- Version
- Version 0.2.0
- Works with
- SimplePlanes 2 0.7.9
- Updated
- Category
- Sound
- Online
- Local onlyExperimental: still has bugs in multiplayer
- Needs
- BepInEx 5. The Gravy Mod Menu is recommended.
- Credits
- Sounds and sources
What it does
Background sound for SimplePlanes 2 that matches where you are. Waves break along the coast, seagulls call and ships sound their horns near the harbours, ships you fly past may sound theirs, the city hums in town, and airports bustle around their runways. By day the countryside is full of birds; at night you hear crickets. In stormy weather, thunder rumbles in the distance. The wind blows harder on mountain tops and up high, and rushes past when you watch your craft fly by. You hear the rest of the ambience mostly near the ground or when moving slowly. In cockpit view it's quieter and muffled.
Features
- Ocean waves within a few hundred metres of the shore (and harbour quays), fading out as you climb. They are quieter when you're low over the open sea.
- Seagulls by day near the coast and harbours: short bursts every 12–70 seconds, coming from the water's side.
- Ship horns near the harbours and the sea: one or three blasts every 1–4 minutes, coming from the nearest harbour. The further the harbour, the quieter and duller the horn.
- Horns from nearby ships. When you pass close to a ship, it may sound its horn (40% by default, once per pass). The horn comes from the ship itself and moves with it, so it pans as you fly by and gets quieter and duller with distance. Big ships are heard from up to 1.5 km, with a lower, longer horn (one or three blasts); small boats from about 600 m, with a short, higher toot. Moored ships sound half as often. A ship that sounded stays quiet for a few minutes, and two ship horns are at least about 20 seconds apart. This works with the Sea Traffic mod's ships (if it's installed) and the game's own carriers and destroyers.
- City noise in towns and cities, worked out from how dense the game's road network is around you. It's quieter at night and gone above about 750 m.
- Airport noise within about 1.5 km of a runway, below about 200 m. This includes runways added by other mods.
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- Countryside birds by day and crickets at night, away from towns, the sea and airports. They crossfade at dusk and dawn, using the same "dark outside" test the game uses to switch its lights on.
- Distant storm when the weather is stormy (the game's weather slider above overcast, including storms set by the Extreme Weather mod). You hear it at any altitude below the clouds; it fades out once you climb above them.
- Wind, following the game's own wind at the camera (the wind setting, which the weather makes gustier, plus ridge lift, thermals and turbulence where those are on). It's louder where you're exposed: high above the sea (from about 300 m, fully by 1.8 km), on summits and ridges, where you also hear a light wind on a calm day. When the camera rides along with your craft in an outside view, your airspeed adds rushing air that rises a little in pitch; in the cockpit that's only a faint, muffled hiss. Unlike the other sounds it doesn't fade with height, cloud or speed. If the Extreme Weather mod is installed, the wind drops to 20% while one of its tornadoes, hurricanes or blizzards blows, since that mod plays its own storm winds.
- Heard near the ground. Every other sound fades with height above the ground or sea. When the camera rides along with your craft (cockpit or chase view), fast flight drowns the ambience out: down to 35% above about 430 km/h.
- Cockpit muffle. In cockpit view the ambience is quieter and low-passed, as if heard through the canopy. How much depends on how enclosed the game considers the cockpit.
- Smooth. Volumes glide (no pops or sudden cuts) and loops are seamless. The sounds pause with the game and fade out in the designer and under water. They follow the game's master volume.
- Purely local audio (see Multiplayer below).
Usage
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Settings live in the Gravy Mod Menu (Ambient Sounds tab) if that mod is installed. It shows:
- live status: what's playing, at what volume and why (e.g. "Ocean Waves 42% (shore 130 m, 12 m up)");
- what the mod sees around you: height above ground, the nearest shore, road density, the nearest airport and harbour, day/night and storm, the wind (speed at the camera, height above the sea, ridge, your airspeed, and whether it's ducked for Extreme Weather), the camera view, how many ships are within horn range, and the last ship that sounded its horn;
- Test Seagulls and Test Ship Horn buttons, which play the sound in front of the camera, even with the menu open;
- every setting below.
Without it, edit the .cfg file.
Multiplayer
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Experimental online. This mod runs in multiplayer, but it still has bugs there that aren't fixed yet. It works best in single player for now.
Local only. The sounds play only on your computer. Nothing in the world, crafts or network changes, other players don't need the mod, and it works the same whether you host or join. Ship horns come from the ships you can see: with Sea Traffic, its ships exist only on the host's computer, so as a client you hear horns from the game's own ships only.
Settings
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| Section | Setting | Default | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ambient Sounds | Enabled | true | Play the ambient sounds |
| Ambient Sounds | MasterVolume | 0.8 | Overall ambience volume (0–1.5), on top of the game's master volume |
| Ambient Sounds | CockpitMuffle | true | Quieter and muffled in cockpit view |
| Ambient Sounds | NearbyShipHorns | true | Horn From Nearby Ships: ships you pass close to may sound their horn |
| Ambient Sounds | NearbyShipHornChance | 0.4 | Chance (0–1) per ship each time you come within its range |
| Volumes | Ocean | 1.0 | Waves on the coast (0–2) |
| Volumes | Seagulls | 1.0 | Seagulls by the coast and harbours (0–2) |
| Volumes | ShipHorn | 1.0 | Ship horns, distant and nearby (0–2) |
| Volumes | City | 1.0 | City noise in towns (0–2) |
| Volumes | Airport | 1.0 | Airport noise near runways (0–2) |
| Volumes | Birds | 1.0 | Countryside birds by day (0–2) |
| Volumes | Crickets | 1.0 | Crickets at night (0–2) |
| Volumes | Storm | 1.0 | Distant thunder in stormy weather (0–2) |
| Volumes | Wind | 1.0 | Wind and rushing air (0–2) |
| Debug | DebugLog | false | Log what's playing and why every 10 seconds |
Known limitations
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- The shore is found from the loaded terrain tiles (and colliders where there's no tile) in rings up to 450 m around the camera. A free camera far from your craft may be over terrain that isn't loaded, which reads as open sea.
- Towns are recognised from road density only. A busy highway interchange can count as a bit of town, and a town with few roads may sound like countryside.
- Harbour positions are a fixed list for the main SP2 island: New Yoke, Bannock, Bannock Industrial, Cochran, Kunimitsu, Daland, Coughinton and Vetusta. Other islands get waves and gulls along their coasts, but no harbour horns or harbour gulls.
- The distant harbour horns are heard whether or not a ship is actually there. Horns from nearby ships only come from real ships.
- A ship's size (which sets its horn range and pitch) is read from Sea Traffic, or measured roughly from the game ship's model. Crafts built by players as boats don't count as ships.
- Height is measured above the terrain under the camera, not above buildings.
- The wind's "up high" and "ridge" are measured from sea level and the terrain within 450 m of the camera. A ridge only counts within about 300 m above it.
- Extreme Weather's storms are detected through that mod's internals. If a future version renames them, the wind ducks in very heavy weather instead (weather slider near "heavy storm"). A hurricane ducks the wind everywhere on the map while it lasts, not only near it.
- The game also has its own airflow noise at speed. The rushing air is kept moderate so the two don't pile up, but in outside views at high speed you hear both.
- No rain, thunderclaps or sirens. Extreme Weather has its own storm winds, thunder and rain on the glass.
Requirements
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- SimplePlanes 2 0.7.9
- BepInEx 5 (5.4.x, x64 Mono build) installed in the game folder. On Linux/Steam Deck with Proton, add
WINEDLLOVERRIDES="winhttp=n,b" %command%to the game's launch options.
The Gravy Mod Menu is recommended: most mods keep their in-game settings and status there. Without it, edit the .cfg files in BepInEx/config/.