Studying pedestrian navigation in crowded environments is key to many applications, like crowd simulation for urban planning, but is challenging under real-world conditions due to the lack of experimental control. This motivates the use of virtual reality to manipulate variables and recreate complex social interactions. While research has mostly emphasized visual feedback, and eventually haptic rendering of collision, the integration of auditory cues in VR platforms, such as footstep sounds, remains overlooked. The present study investigates the role of adding footstep sounds in a VR collision-avoidance task. Twenty participants completed a within-subject experiment where a virtual pedestrian, initially visually occluded, crossed their path either with or without audible footsteps. Locomotor adjustments and gaze behavior were analyzed before and during the visual interaction. Results showed that footstep sounds induced earlier gaze orientation and more proactive trajectory adjustments from the participants, without affecting their walking speed. In contrast, the absence of sound led to more collisions and crossing order inversions, indicating reduced efficiency. These findings demonstrate that simple auditory cues can guide attention, facilitate anticipation, and improve interactions with virtual agents. Integrating sound into VR platforms is therefore essential to study pedestrian behavior and social navigation.

abstract- Various research studies, with contradictory results, indicate that tempo synchronization affects player performance differently depending on whether it is aligned with gameplay or player actions. To test this hypothesis, this demo presents a customized 3D video game with a dynamic audio system, allowing separate synchronization with game states or player decisions. Empirical tests have shown that the audio is well synchronized with in-game events. Moreover, the created game is intended to offer an immersive setting suitable for examining the diverse effects of musical alignment on player abilities.

We present a concrete application of genetic algorithm in the field of cryptography. More precisely, we provide a new and original cryptographic symmetric encryption scheme called Genetic Meta Cipher (GMC) using the non-dominated sorting-based multiobjective genetic algorithm, NSGA-II. The originality of GMC is that it is a keyless encryption meta-program i.e. a program capable of producing encryption algorithms from modular operations (bitwise primitives) with configurable options. Compared with the randomness test methods for binary sequence of the Standardization Administration of China (SAC), the ciphering result obtained with the encryption algorithms generated by GMC is equivalent in terms of randomness to that obtained with AES protocol (using a random set of keys). Another feature of GMC is that, instead of renewing a single encryption key as with known symmetric algorithms, an entire encryption algorithm is renewed, making its cryptanalysis more complex. GMC therefore appears to be an effective and promising cryptographic response to privacy and security issues, with a new way of thinking about encryption and a wider use of genetic algorithms in cryptography.

We present Soundoku, a sound-based puzzle game designed for sighted people. The goal of this game is to determine if it is possible to transform a popular puzzle game like Blendoku into a sound-based puzzle, without making it a musical game, and to obtain a fun, interesting and eventually instructive game. Initial evaluations of our game by players between the ages of 17 and 26 indicate that the game is considered fun if not addictive. These results pave the way for the creation of a game using procedural generation of sound puzzles.

As music tempo can influence human actions pace, we use tempi variations to vary the difficulty in gaming situations based on the synchronization of events, like actions on moving objects in arcade games or waves of enemies in FPS. In this work, musical tempi are exploited to hinder or help Tetris players. Over the first phase of this work involving 44 players and more than 230 Tetris games we discovered surprising interactions between different tempo characteristics influencing the player’s performance. The positive or negative effects of specific tempi settings we discovered were validated in a second phase involving 19 players and 50 Tetris games. Once the effect was chosen, it was dynamically triggered according to certain conditions that were validated during the first phase of this work. Results show that a transition from a staircase increase to a more gradual increase in tempo significantly hinders Tetris players when both tempi are synchronous with the gameplay whereas the same transition help players when both tempi are not synchronized with game actions. Our approach provides new and valuable insight to varying video-game difficulty when gaming situations ask the player to increasingly synchronize with the pace of the game.

It has been shown that music influences human behavior and that it can influence the sports endurance or cognitive performance (memory, reflexes) of individuals. However, little research exists on its influence on the performance of video game players. Music is used to create a particular atmosphere in a game but can it be used to change the difficulty of the game? In this paper, we examine the effects of musical tempo on the performance of players in the Tetris game. By experimenting with different tempo settings for the same music -perfectly synchronous with the game, gradually accelerating to prepare for speed steps, slightly out of sync or in total opposition to the tension of the game- we have shown a significant influence of tempo on the performance of novice Tetris players and even more so for those who have a neutral evaluation of the music. By increasing the tension of the game, a synchronous and increasing tempo can increase the player's stress and degrade his performance, while a tempo that is out of sync with the actions of the game or slowed down regularly can defuse this stress.

In this demo paper, we present Sonotris, a Tetris game with a dynamic soundtrack specifically designed to experiment with the influence of musical tempo on player performance. The different stages of the game use music whose tempo is either perfectly synchronous with the game, or accelerates progressively to prepare the speed steps, or is slightly out of sync, or in total opposition to the tension of the game. Our first tests on a group of 41 players showed a significant influence of tempo on the performance of novice players in Tetris and even more for those with a neutral evaluation of the music.