Abstract This study investigates the effectiveness of preattentive visual features, namely motion, color, and shape, in guiding attention within consistent 3D game-like environments. Through two experiments, we measured detection accuracy and user preferences for visual cues embedded in controlled scenes. In the first experiment, motion and color were reliably detected within 250 ms, while shape-based detection showed lower accuracy and greater variability. The second experiment extended the analysis by collecting player preferences in a simple interactive scenario. Participants strongly favored color cues, particularly glowing effects, for their visual appeal. These findings highlight the value of combining perceptual performance with user preference when designing attention-guiding mechanisms in interactive 3D environments.
Jusufi et al. (Wed,) studied this question.