The sound of Steel Beasts

Using expert consultants when developing a game is nothing new, but in the case of tank sim "Steel Beasts" much of the game was tested and co-developed by "tankers". The game's sound effects, for example, are mostly the work of Edward "Volcano Man" Williams, an American soldier who is part of the crew of a real M1A1 tank, and has served in Bosnia and Germany in recent years.

"My goal has been to make the sound aspect of Steel Beasts as true to life as possible", Edward told SimHQ in a recent interview. "Real tankers will instantly recognize sounds that they have become all too familiar with on the real tank. SB has some 106 sound effects, which includes everything from reloading the caliber 50, to traversing the turret in manual mode with the hand crank, to the auxiliary hydraulic pump, on down to the sound of flipping of the GPS 3x / 10x magnification lever and everything else in between."

If you look your simulations to be as close to the real thing as possible, Steel Beasts could be what you're looking for. As Volcano Man said, "Nothing can substitute the feeling of firing the M256 main gun or just being on or near the tank when it fires, [but] I have tried to reproduce this feeling the best that I could through sound".