What color does the human eye respond to the fastest?

[interested1]

This may not be your everyday question but I am wondering what color the human eye responds to the quickest. The reason I ask is while playing multiplayer games, I want to have the color of my crosshair to whatever is scientifically the best color to go with.

I have done a little research and read that Yellow is the color that the human eye sees first, but I also read that can strain the eyes; but can also help one concentrate. Would that be ideal for my situation?

Green is a soothing color but would that be best, or perhaps purple?

Sorry in advanced if this isn't the correct forums for this question.

Regards.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[RadixLuminogen]

Why should it matter since your crosshair is at the center of your screen the whole time. I think what should matter more is your somewhat peripheral vision so you can see objects on the sides of your screen. So if you really want to be scientific about it, change your contrast to super high and your color saturation to 0. You will have a high contrast peripheral black and white experience that will stimulate your rods. But that can be a bit boring no? haha

Your rods are way faster and can distinguish higher frequencies of flicker (60 Hertz or more) and more subtle brightness changes.

 

[Rain Clouds]

My very unscientific but educated assumption that the brain would respond fastest to the highest contrast and most stimulating stimulus, which I suppose would be... white! White light is a combo of all colors, which would stimulate all your photo receptors, and would stand out brightest on a screen... don't have research to back me up, but it makes sense to me.

 

[Commando303]

This may not be your everyday question but I am wondering what color the human eye responds to the quickest. The reason I ask is while playing multiplayer games, I want to have the color of my crosshair to whatever is scientifically the best color to go with.

I have done a little research and read that Yellow is the color that the human eye sees first, but I also read that can strain the eyes; but can also help one concentrate. Would that be ideal for my situation?

Green is a soothing color but would that be best, or perhaps purple?

Sorry in advanced if this isn't the correct forums for this question.

Regards.

Your question is problematic. You seem to want to know what color to make your crosshairs so they are seen most easily. This is different from which color will be most likely absorbed by a given photoreceptor.

In general, the higher the contrast — i.e., the difference in brightness between one thing and another, such as between an object and its background — the easier it will be to see something. Your crosshairs will be most easily seen against a black background, if they are white (or yellow). If the background is red, green (or cyan) will be seen most easily. So, the answer to your question is, "It depends"; specifically, it depends on what color the background happens to be.

This is why your text cursor in a word-processing program (e.g., Microsoft Word) will be a different color if hovering over black text (when it will be white) from if hovering over yellow highlighting (when it will become blue).

Probably, (F.P.S.) video-game crosshairs work well in red, as the background tends to be gray (building environments) or green (jungle environments).

There also always is automatic-aiming...

P.S.: You're using photopic vision when playing video games, not scotopic.