Re: Monster Hunt #18: Vry vs. Opal & Somatra
Well, if you're using sight, generally speaking, yes, it is pretty much a straight line. You can't see something behind you if your not looking directly at it.
With sound, speaking as an audio engineer, yeah, sound does tend to travel around objects, but the sound becomes dampened and looses a lot of its quality the further it travels and the more it has to move around things so the best way to hear something is directly from the source into your ear, or, a straight line from source to receptacle. (that's why we have headphones. :P)
Now, if we're thinking about a labyrinth of stone walls in the dream realm underground somewhere, sound is going to be reflected very heavily the further it travels, meaning its going to go further but its going to become distorted and fold in upon itself so hearing something and pinpointing it is going to be very difficult because by the time the sound reaches you, it's either all but gone, or its been echoing so much its next to impossible to tell where it came from originally.
But, once again, I'll default to the ref on this one.