Ensuring appropriate sound volume
How do you set a sound volume or make the user adjust their volume setting in a way that the loudness of the soundscape in a simulation matches reality as closely as possible?
Imagine: in an AR or VR simulated landscape there is an object of interest in the distance that emits some noise, e.g. a wind turbine. The user's task is to assert the nuisance this is causing. If they yank up the volume to eleven, it will probably be louder than in nature, but if the speakers or headphones are almost muted, the results are also worthless.
My best take on the issue is to add several objects to the scene that produce sounds whose noise level at the observed distance is common knowledge. I'm not sure how many of such reference points there would need to be or which (e.g. flies and birds) to use.