Free visual tracking game — instant play, no signup, no download
Sound Direction plays a sound and asks where it came from. Locating a sound depends on tiny differences in timing and level between your two ears, which means headphones are essentially required — laptop speakers give you almost no directional information at all.
Put headphones on — this game does not work properly without them.
Press Start and listen for the sound.
Indicate the direction it came from.
Directions become closer together as you progress.
Your score reflects the angular precision you reached.
Auditory spatial localisation. Horizontal localisation is genuinely precise in most people; vertical and front-back judgements are much weaker, which is a real limitation rather than a failing.
Use headphones. Without them the game measures nothing.
Stay still. Head movement is how you normally resolve ambiguity, and it defeats the test here.
Close your eyes. Vision dominates spatial judgement and will bias you.
Trust the first impression — deliberating about a sound's position makes accuracy worse.
Localisation depends on the difference between what each ear receives. Speakers deliver both channels to both ears and destroy that difference.
Horizontal accuracy of a few degrees is typical for sounds directly ahead, and it degrades towards the sides. Front-back confusions are common and normal.
Because the timing and level differences between your ears are nearly identical for mirrored front and back positions. Head movement normally resolves it, and you cannot use that here.
Asymmetric hearing loss affects it substantially, since the whole mechanism is a comparison between ears.