The Missing Next Step: Sound, Agency, and Plausibility in Virtual Reality — A Narrative Review

Kurucz P, Hillman N, Serafin S, Klein E, Baghaei N. The Missing Next Step: Sound, Agency, and Plausibility in Virtual Reality — A Narrative Review. In: Convention Paper. Audio Engineering Society; 2026. Paper 10260. Available from: https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=23207

@inproceedings{Kurucz2026_23207,
  author = {Kurucz, Peter and Hillman, Neil and Serafin, Stefania and Klein, Eve and Baghaei, Nilufar},
  title = {{The Missing Next Step: Sound, Agency, and Plausibility in Virtual Reality — A Narrative Review}},
  note = {Paper 10260},
  year = {2026},
  month = may,
  publisher = {Audio Engineering Society},
  url = {https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=23207}
}

TY  - CPAPER
TI  - The Missing Next Step: Sound, Agency, and Plausibility in Virtual Reality — A Narrative Review
AU  - Kurucz, Peter
AU  - Hillman, Neil
AU  - Serafin, Stefania
AU  - Klein, Eve
AU  - Baghaei, Nilufar
M1  - Paper 10260
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/05/28
UR  - https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=23207
PB  - Audio Engineering Society
LA  - en
AB  - Sound plays a critical role in virtual reality (VR), shaping attention, narrative comprehension, emotional engagement, and experiential plausibility under conditions of embodiment and user agency. Although a growing body of research addresses VR audio techniques, perceptual effects, and sound taxonomies, existing approaches remain fragmented and largely descriptive. In particular, they do not provide a unifying, VR-specific account of how sound meaning and emotional intent are operationally linked to user agency and non-linear narrative progression. This paper presents a narrative review of selected literature spanning game audio frameworks, immersive sound design, narrative theory, and plausibility-related research in games and VR. Through synthesis of these perspectives, the review identifies a conceptual gap in current research, namely the absence of a VR-specific, agency-coupled sound design framework for structuring sound meaning and emotional intent in support of experiential plausibility as users actively shape events in interactive VR environments.
ER  -