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The Sound Proof Booths of Silence

dota2.com

141–150 of 203 posts

Re: The Sound Proof Booths of Silence

#141
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This [1] explains Sound Transmission Class (STC) ratings. > An STC label delineates how partitions and walls effectively block sound and reduce noise. Ratings are determined by broadcasting a specific auditory tone near the material, and measuring dB on both sides. The higher the STC value, the better its insulation. From the table STC=25 means "Normal speech easily understood" and STC=50 means "Shouting not heard" T…

I wonder if somebody vaguely remembered the effects of helium fill, which actually does reduce sound transmission, and vaguely remembered that argon-filled windows are a commercial product, and conflated the two because they're both noble gases.

Nothing about the story of this project suggests they are top-tier sound engineers, and when you don't really know what you're doing (said very respectfully) the proposition "we need to fill windows and this is what other people normally do when they fill windows" is a very positive data point.

They didn't even start with museum-grade glass for optimal filming, which to a absolute layman like me seems like they just hadn't bumped most of these problems before.

Re: The Sound Proof Booths of Silence

#142

Aging myself here... I played a ton of DOTA on the WarCraft3 engine... probably when I should have been studying for engineering finals. What amazed me about the game, and probably why it is so addictively fun to play is you always have two competing things gripping for your attention. On one hand, resource farming _demands_ incredible attention to detail (obtaining the last shot on creeps for a kill, ergo a gold rew…

They've added turbo mode recently which keeps most games between 15 and 30 minutes!

if it weren't for Turbo I probably wouldn't still be playing 11 years after beta. Turbo is great.

Re: The Sound Proof Booths of Silence

#143

I wonder if they have looked into air curtains. Commercial installations are at a point where you have this silent, completely invisible sheet of fast-moving air that provides some degree of noise isolation as well - maybe four walls of these + a floating ceiling is enough when coupled with the noise-cancelling headphones.

I think leave the audience participation in, let the chaos rain supreme!

Players have said in the past that it makes it impossible to do Roshan sneakily, since the crowd gives it away.

Re: The Sound Proof Booths of Silence

#144
post #106

Valve seems like such a blank check company, able to jump onto projects and apply so much effort to things thanks to their resources Would love to see more about what they’re doing and how they’re organized recently (an updated employee handbook?)

My understanding is that they're still privately owned and pretty free, culturally, right? Yeah, I wish they'd make a few blog posts about how they run projects. Would love to see how the Deck, Index, GeForce Now support, etc. all came to be. They're that rare tech company from the 90s/2000s that I still adore today.

You can definitely see the difference in ownership that Gabe Newell brings to Valve, just as Tim Sweeney has to Epic, as founders that have been with the companies from the beginning. They can do things just because they're interesting. They clearly feel free to explore. It's a remarkable luxury of their financial success. Mojang perhaps had that potential (due to how hyper profitable Minecraft was), but, well....

Re: The Sound Proof Booths of Silence

#145
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if somebody vaguely remembered the effects of helium fill, which actually does reduce sound transmission, and vaguely remembered that argon-filled windows are a commercial product, and conflated the two because they're both noble gases.

Nothing about the story of this project suggests they are top-tier sound engineers, and when you don't really know what you're doing (said very respectfully) the proposition "we need to fill windows and this is what other people normally do when they fill windows" is a very positive data point. They didn't even start with museum-grade glass for optimal filming, which to a absolute layman like me seems like they just…

When they started doing these tournaments over a decade ago, esports LAN tournaments was barely an industry, and crowds were small. Also, MOBAs are unlike many other esport genres [1], in that the two teams have partial information about the state of the game, and illegally getting information a few seconds early can change the entire outcome of the game [2].

Meaning there was no one in the world who really knew how to build such booths. Moreover, they discovered required features of the booths over the years. In such a scenario, the early mistakes are very understandable.

[1] Think Street Fighter, or FIFA

[2] I don't think games like Starcraft has such low time tolerances on information flow. Even cheers in Dota can be enough of a clue.

Re: The Sound Proof Booths of Silence

#146

Aging myself here... I played a ton of DOTA on the WarCraft3 engine... probably when I should have been studying for engineering finals. What amazed me about the game, and probably why it is so addictively fun to play is you always have two competing things gripping for your attention. On one hand, resource farming _demands_ incredible attention to detail (obtaining the last shot on creeps for a kill, ergo a gold rew…

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Re: The Sound Proof Booths of Silence

#147
post #106

Valve seems like such a blank check company, able to jump onto projects and apply so much effort to things thanks to their resources Would love to see more about what they’re doing and how they’re organized recently (an updated employee handbook?)

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Re: The Sound Proof Booths of Silence

#148

I was served the Dutch translation, and I must say I am impressed with the state of the art of this machine translation. While this still feels mechanically translated English, and accents are missing, it was very readable. I am used to having to translate each individual word to English and swap some verbs to end up with something readable -- with the regular paragraph of total gibberish in between. This reads like…

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Re: The Sound Proof Booths of Silence

#149
post #9

This is a great article and I understand the need for the booths, but to me personally, they look horrible. It looks as if the players are sitting in a kiosk. Surely it would make for a much more enveloping experience for the spectators if the players were in an open space.

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