Without going back to Arthur Rimbaud and his poem “Voyelles” on the colors of letters, the interplay between our five senses has been observed for quite some time. Visual perception, say, is influenced by our auditory system; for instance, the image quality of a movie is often considered as better than what it is when coupled with a high-quality audio track. The authors intend to get a scientific grasp on such issues, in order to ultimately use them to enhance the quality of surgical training via serious games at a lower computational cost.

A field experiment gathering 12 students was performed to assess the impact of various soundscapes on the perception of realism of a hospital-related virtual environment when performing a simple virtual task, namely going around a patient’s bed and picking up a surgical tool. The game uses a first-person perspective and arrow keys for navigation. The level of realism was varied via a blurring filter over the simulated scene. Although preliminary, the results suggest that, contrarily to what was expected, the level of realism was correctly assessed by the users, independently of the sound used. However, distracting sounds such as white noise were detrimental to the training process (task completion time). Arguments are provided to explain why the image realism versus sound effect hypothesis did not manifest itself here.

This short and easy-to-read paper should be of interest to game designers and researchers interested in the educational impact of serious games for training.