The Effect of Lighting, Landmarks and Auditory Cues on Human Performance in Navigating a Virtual Maze

The human visual and auditory systems are attentive to variations in both lighting and sound, and changes in either are used in audiovisual media to draw attention. In video games specifically, many embedded navigational cues are utilised to subtly suggest navigational choices to players. Both lighting and audio cues are commonly utilised by game designers to signal specific events or to draw player focus and therefore influence navigational decisions. We analyse the influence that combinations of landmark, auditory and illumination cues have on player navigation. 134 participants navigated through a randomly assigned subset of thirty structurally similar virtual mazes with variations of lighting, spatial audio and landmark cues. The solve times for these mazes were analysed to determine the influence of each individual cue and evaluate any cue competition or interactions effects detected. The findings demonstrate that auditory and subtle lighting had distinct effects on navigation and maze solve times and that interactions and cue competition effects were also evident.