Insight #4: Optimal Light Settings
The Importance Of Lighting In Your Gaming Environment
Our eyes interpret and respond to light in different ways depending on the environment. Simply being aware of this can help improve your vision during a gaming session. But how? Let’s start with how the human eye works.
As a sense organ, the eye contains receptors that react to light, intensity and colour. This enables us to see in both dim and bright light thanks to the different structures at play, which work together to capture light and provide us with vision. The retina is the most crucial.
Made up of light-sensitive tissue, the retina contains different cells called photoreceptors. Two of the most vital are rods and cones. While rods are responsible for motion detection and night vision, cones respond to light of different wavelengths to allow for full colour vision. Together, they convert light into electrical signals, which the brain turns into visual images.
A third type of light-sensitive photoreceptor, called ipRGCs (intrinsically photosensitive Retinal Ganglion Cells), is especially sensitive to light at short wavelengths, known as blue light. This helps synchronise our sleep-wake cycle, meaning that exposure to such light from screens in the evening can mislead our body clock and subsequently affect our alertness, moods, and task performance.
Take the above into consideration when choosing and regulating the ambient light of your gaming environment, ensuring that enough emits from the screen and not too much from the surroundings. This will offer a better visual experience and should improve overall performance.
