The effect of music on the perception of display rate and duration of animated sequences: an experimental study

It´s currently impossible, even on modern graphics hardware to compute high fidelity graphics of complex scenes in real time. As we are producing the graphics for human observers it may be possible to exploit limitations of the human perceptual system to improve the quality/rendering time ratio. When confronted with multisensory input the human has to divide his/her cognitive resources between the different sensory stimuli. We present an independent samples experiment on the influence of musical tempo and emotional suggestiveness of music on the perception of motion and time duration in a computer graphics environment. The purpose is to investigate whether music would be a significant distractor, allowing us to render at a slower frame rate without any perceivable difference for the user. No overall main effect of fast tempo/exciting music was revealed, while slow tempo/relaxing music resulted in longer duration estimations and slower perceived temporal rates