Fallout 4 Should Lasers Make Noise?

[pjedilord]

We should think about lasers,plasmas in Fallout 4 they make noise right?
How far can they be heard from? Why make noise for the weapons as it
makes people aware of weapon shot,and they will pursue the shooter,so
its not stealthy? So in theory they should be silent? Technology wise

I dont think they would make noise? use much? so machine guns etc
are much louder,so npc would be able to hear machine guns shot guns,sniper etc
from much far distance than lasers,plasmas?so for distance kills we would
be better off with silent weapons,laser rifle,plasmas instead of machine guns
etc? What prefer to use more? I never done silent on lasers people have?

[Zekiran]

The entire "lasers making noise" thing goes back to the 50s sci fi, and it is specifically the 50s sci fi aesthetic that this game is based on. So it will always be a pewpew rather than a sensible quiet weapon.

[Benno]

i think it's not the laser itself making the noise, it's the air that is exploding when the super highly charged and hot laser beam travels through it with light speed. maybe it's the cooling system in the weapons making that noise and not the laser itself. idk

but what grinds my gears is that lasers have recoil in fallout.

[gregnewman2022]

I agree with Zekiran on this one . unless you actually listening for it you would miss the sound or maybe pass it off as something else . I don't enough about plasma
weapons to comment about them . I used both military and civilian ballistic weapons ( and I don't know why ) , for some reason , military weapons of the same calibre are usually louder than their civilian counterparts .

[Twelvefield]

Presumably the power source that produces the beam makes noise, since it would be something to have a hand-held beam weapon that can melt a person.

With lightning, you get thunder because of extremely rapid heating of the air through intense ionization. The air is almost instantly heated to 30-50,000 °C, causing it to explode. But lightning strikes are hundreds of meters long, and the energy transfer is different from a laser. Maybe with a laser that powerful, it would also make thunder. Not effective for stealth, but still effective as a method of killing, provided you could even control something like that.

[isomorphic_projection]

I would say yes, https://www.youtube.com/shorts/8ek3m355cw0

[DouglasGrave]

I guess at least the lasers are actual beams, instead of energy bolts.

[Lemurian1972]

Have you ever used an old style tube television? They can get pretty noisy when you power them up or down, and those are in essence a lot like a laser rifle (the emitter is even called an electron gun). Capacitors and other analog electronic components can develop a lot of weird sounds, particularly as they age.

Fallout 4 energy weapons are essentially a fictional power source, a bunch of capacitors, and an emitter device (either light, plasma, magnetic charge that drives a projectile, or gamma radiation).

Unless someone figured out how to make these various high energy components on a single chip, they're gonna have the potential to be noisy.

[Xenon The Noble]

Depends on the laser wavelength and upon the amount of dirt and other particles in the air.

[sdack]

There are many reasons why lasers make a noise. The energy impacting a target and destroying the target makes a sound. The more destruction occurs, the more matter gets vapourised, and the louder it is. As already mentioned does the air when it is heated up, and possibly gets ionized, make a noise. Like lightning creating thunder.

The weapon itself is noisy, unless very carefully engineered with silence in mind. Electric and electronic components vibrate as a result of electricity running through them, creating electro-magnetism, leading to small physical forces within, and resulting in noises. Then there are electro-static forces, again created by electricity, which also produce noises. These noises can be a beep, a humm, a hiss, a click, etc.. It depends on how the laser weapon was designed.

Think of how a computer makes all sorts of noises of its own and is often not perfectly silent, all while it uses less than a kilowatt. And think of how a statically-charged plastic film can make crackling sounds, too. Powerful lasers have to pump out hundreds of kilowatts, if not more, within less than a second. The more powerful a laser is the louder these noises are.

And there is the aspect of secondary sources of noise, like a cooling system or a generator.

[isomorphic_projection]

It's not the laser itself which makes the sound, but the air in it's path which get's super heated and explodes, it breaks down the hydrogen bonds first and then the hydrogen and oxygen explodes. Why there is a low pulsating humming effect, at a high alternating frequency. Also gives the color to the laser, O2 is red.

[pjedilord]

Publicado originalmente por Zekiran:

The entire "lasers making noise" thing goes back to the 50s sci fi, and it is specifically the 50s sci fi aesthetic that this game is based on. So it will always be a pewpew rather than a sensible quiet weapon.

Publicado originalmente por Benno:

i think it's not the laser itself making the noise, it's the air that is exploding when the super highly charged and hot laser beam travels through it with light speed. maybe it's the cooling system in the weapons making that noise and not the laser itself. idk

but what grinds my gears is that lasers have recoil in fallout.

Publicado originalmente por Twelvefield:

Presumably the power source that produces the beam makes noise, since it would be something to have a hand-held beam weapon that can melt a person.

With lightning, you get thunder because of extremely rapid heating of the air through intense ionization. The air is almost instantly heated to 30-50,000 °C, causing it to explode. But lightning strikes are hundreds of meters long, and the energy transfer is different from a laser. Maybe with a laser that powerful, it would also make thunder. Not effective for stealth, but still effective as a method of killing, provided you could even control something like that.

Publicado originalmente por DouglasGrave:

I guess at least the lasers are actual beams, instead of energy bolts.

Publicado originalmente por Xenon The Noble:

Depends on the laser wavelength and upon the amount of dirt and other particles in the air.

So sound is for us to enjoy? Why dont we have uzi in Fallout 4?
How know so much about laser? Why should lasers have recoil?

[steventirey]

Publicado originalmente por pjedilord:

Why should lasers have recoil?

Even light has mass and can move things. Now it will be so little movement from a laser to essentially have no noticeable recoil. It wouldn't be anywhere near as much recoil as they have in Fallout.

[DouglasGrave]

Further question: Why isn't there a "Silent" legendary effect?

[Twelvefield]

Publicado originalmente por pjedilord:

Why dont we have uzi in Fallout 4?
How know so much about laser? Why should lasers have recoil?

Everybody knows about lasers because of Pink Floyd. You learn a lot in those shows.

There's no strong reason I can see for or against putting an Uzi into Fallout , except that the Uzi isn't American. It's Israeli. It's invention may also be slightly past the cultural roadblock created for Fallout: it was prototyped in the early 1950's and didn't make it out of Israel until maybe the 1960's. While Fallout is set a couple hundred years from now, it doesn't seem to recognize much in the way of technology past our 1950's, except that you can strap fusion batteries to their tech by using magic plothole tape to make it work.

Who knows how Israel is doing in the Fallout world. The game is so American-centric, it's hard to say what relations Israel and Palestine would have, or even if they exist. I recall no Jews or Arabs in any Fallout game, but I'm not a master of the lore, either. Nor would I want as a dev or a gamer to even try to reconcile that part of the world in a Fallout game. The real world is horrifying enough to want to play that ♥♥♥♥ out for entertainment value.

As for a "Silent" Legendary effect, that seems logical, but how well do the NPC's hear things anyways? Sneaking is powerfully weird in Fallout. Thinking with a dev hat on, either Legendary Silence would be too overpowered for the NPC's to handle, or else too difficult to code well. Or they simply didn't think of it, the programming was a decade ago and things were different back then. When Fallout 4 was being released, if you were talking about uber it was a commentary on Nietzsche, and had nothing to do with taxi cabs. ← an example

[DouglasGrave]

Publicado originalmente por Twelvefield:

As for a "Silent" Legendary effect, that seems logical, but how well do the NPC's hear things anyways? Sneaking is powerfully weird in Fallout. Thinking with a dev hat on, either Legendary Silence would be too overpowered for the NPC's to handle, or else too difficult to code well. Or they simply didn't think of it, the programming was a decade ago and things were different back then. When Fallout 4 was being released, if you were talking about uber it was a commentary on Nietzsche, and had nothing to do with taxi cabs. ← an example

My conclusion would be that they simply didn't think of it amongst their choices, or maybe it didn't seem all that strong compared to existing muzzle brakes, silencers, and the like. It doesn't seem like something that was beyond them to think up, since like powerful/mighty to receivers, it would essentially be like an upgrade of an existing part's effect.

Another possibility is that it went against some unknown design ethos of theirs that favoured effects boosting damage or fire rate, but not effects changing range or noise.