[AUDIO] Follow-up: distant gunfire positioning
I've posted two detailed audio threads previously covering long-range scale and close/mid-range readability. After playing a lot of PUBG lately, a few things became clear that I didn't spell out before. Posting this supplement while those thoughts are fresh.
The core problem: in BF6, a distant gunshot past ~150-200m is present in volume but acoustically sterile—no sense of the space it traveled through, no directional precision, and no environmental signature. You hear "a shot happened somewhere over there," not "an AK fired from a courtyard 200m northwest, and the sound bounced off those buildings."
I'm not asking for PUBG's ballistic crack system—that's engine-level and unique to that game. I'm asking that within BF6's existing HDR / Threat Bus / bi-directional raycast architecture, three things be treated as first-class concerns for distant non-threat sound.
What I'd like to see improved:
1. Distant gunfire should retain its spatial tail (reverb / RT60).
Right now, a shot 200m away arrives as a near-instantaneous, dry transient. In reality, that same shot would carry a short environmental reflection—a faint tail telling you whether it was fired in an open plaza, a narrow street, or near hard surfaces. BF6 already records weapons in ~9 different environments; the spatial tail is the glue that makes "where" legible. Suggestion: extend RT60 for distant non-threat sources so the environmental reflection survives the distance attenuation, instead of being truncated alongside the loudness.
2. Sidechain ducking should touch gain, not spatialization.
When the mix attenuates a distant source, the HRTF cues (ITD/ILD) and the spatial tail should stay intact. A sound can be quieter without becoming ambiguous or dry. Right now it feels like both the direction and the tail get reduced together with the gain.
3. Distance-based sample blending (like BF1 did).
From what I hear, distant gunfire in BF6 is just the close-range sample turned down and low-passed. BF1 blended between separately recorded close, mid, and far samples based on distance. The far sample sounds like a far shot because it was recorded that way—not because the close one got muffled. This would naturally carry the spatial tail and directional stability that current BF6 distant audio lacks. The tech isn't new; BF1 proved it works. S5 is the right moment to bring it back.
4. HPF widening should preserve high-frequency localization cues.
Current high-pass filtering appears to strip out the exact frequencies HRTF uses to triangulate direction, and also truncates the airy spatial tail. If the goal is to keep low-end body at distance (SCAR-H rumble, etc.), the cutoff should still leave enough highs for the brain to get a bearing and for the environment to "speak."
5. Threat Bus governs loudness priority, not positional fidelity or spatial tail.
The Threat Bus does important work making immediate dangers audible. But it shouldn't degrade the spatial precision or truncate the environmental reflection of background battlefield audio. Non-threatening distant fire should sit lower in the mix—not lower in positional accuracy, and not with its tail cut off.
Why this matters
BF6's scale is its identity. 64 players, massive maps, chaotic fights—I love that. But when I hear fighting on a ridgeline 300m away, three pieces of information should survive:
Presence – the sound exists and has weight (low-end body)
Direction – I can tell if it's north or northwest
Space – I can tell if it's in an open field, a street, or near buildings (via the spatial tail)
Right now the mix is tuned so aggressively around "hear the threat" that distant non-threat sound loses all three. The tech to fix this isn't exotic—BF1's distance-based samples, extended RT60 for distant sources, and a more surgical sidechain are all achievable within the current architecture.
S5's "more comprehensive audio changes" feels like the right window. Happy to test anything in BF Labs.
