Hi everyone!
I need to reproduce the sound of a motorbike (a motocross motorbike in particular) for a game I am developing for a project.
I would ask you the following advises.
1) What elements do you think are the most relevant to record? Exhaust, Engine, Gears, Transmission..
2)I am for sure interested in recording the engine sounds and the exhaust. Have you any suggestion about the positioning of the microphones (orientatiotion with respect of the object to record, which elements of the engine to underline in particular)?
3)What kind of microphones would you use to record such sounds? Any name in particular? What kind of setup would you use?
4)I saw some car recordings where they record also "ambience" sounds with panormaic mic..does this make sense for game implementation?
5)Is there any literature regarding motorbike/car sound recordig?

Ehm..a lot of questions! Just having some clues about a few points would be of great help!
Thanks in advance!!

I've got no advice of my own, but this article might give some ideas:
Making the cars sound awesome

Thanks! Very Interesting! :)

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Original post by LostPitch Hi everyone! I need to reproduce the sound of a motorbike (a motocross motorbike in particular) for a game I am developing for a project. I would ask you the following advises.

Cool! I'll do my best to share what advice I have but it might be somewhat limited.

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Original post by LostPitch 1) What elements do you think are the most relevant to record? Exhaust, Engine, Gears, Transmission..

It depends on the game play really. But off the top of my head (and without really knowing much about the game) I would assume two basic sounds are vital: idle and acceleration. So by combining different engine elements together you could create a sound palate to support both actions.

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Original post by LostPitch 2)I am for sure interested in recording the engine sounds and the exhaust. Have you any suggestion about the positioning of the microphones (orientatiotion with respect of the object to record, which elements of the engine to underline in particular)?

I would focus on where the hammers (correct name?) are and the exhaust pipe. Always have the mic slightly off axis to allow for wind (unless you have a nice foam cover).

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Original post by LostPitch 3)What kind of microphones would you use to record such sounds? Any name in particular? What kind of setup would you use?

Have you ever recorded a drum set? If so, use the same approach. Have your "room" mics which are omni set up further away to capture the overall sounds. Have your directional mics closer up and focused on specific parts of the bike. Have all of this routed to a session where all mics record at once to everything is synced.

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Original post by LostPitch 4)I saw some car recordings where they record also "ambience" sounds with panormaic mic..does this make sense for game implementation?

Yep, it does. Especially for a racing game where you're going to work with ambient sounds in greater detail since there are multiple bikes. It all depends on how you implement these sounds.

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Original post by LostPitch 5)Is there any literature regarding motorbike/car sound recordig?

Not that I know of all of the top of my head but I'm sure a google search will give you something. It may not be specific to motorbike/car recording but a book that covers those elements as well as others.

Thanks a lot!
Can I ask you another hint? What kind of microphones would you use? I am thinking about large diaphgram condenser mic in particular for the exhaust, to have more accuracy on the low frequencies..