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Dumpshock Forums _ Shadowrun _ I've got my can of Spray'd-AR...

Posted by: Shrike30 Jun 9 2006, 10:20 PM

(Spray'd-AR is pronounced like "radar")

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"2070's here, and along with all the amazing advances in lifestyle technology, spraypaint's come a long way too.

Spray'd-AR is the latest in Combined Augmented Tagging Technology developments. In addition to 50 color selections (including flourescent and Nano-Glo shades), Spray'd-AR has a programmable ARO cassette built into the top of the can. After programming in the text or image you want the ARO to display with your commlink, a single tap of the thumb trigger drops an ARO marker into the paint stream and fires it out of the can, where it becomes a nearly invisible part of your tag. As the paint flash-dries to the surface, it binds the ARO marker in place, making your tag not only a piece of art visible to the naked eye, but a multimedia masterpiece visible on the air for everyone to see. Any fool can spray up a building, but it takes attitude, talent, and the right technology to really make people take notice.

Spray'd-AR: When you want to make a statement that gets heard."

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Of course, while the marketing is aimed at street 'punks, the product has a lot of uses outside of tagging. The 'Star uses it during riot situations to mark suspects when they're doing mass arrests. Construction crews use them in buildings to mark where utilities run in the walls. Longshoremen use it to track where containers are on the docks (about the only upgrade they've made from the piece of chalk in use a century ago). And of course, graffiti has become a lot more colorful and obtrusive, now that it's been Augmented... "Kilroy was here" with an AR caricature of Kilroy himself thumbing his nose at you have started cropping up all over Seattle.

Anyone else have ideas for uses for this stuff? Or maybe just something they'd spray on a wall?

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Jun 9 2006, 11:19 PM

Disaster site exploration. When exploring the WTC ruins for problems and survivors, they used spraypaint to tag the place as "safe" or "dangerous".

Posted by: ronin3338 Jun 9 2006, 11:22 PM

Lots of uses... very nifty.

WTG Shrike, consider this yoink'd

Posted by: Shrike30 Jun 9 2006, 11:35 PM

I just remembered playing SWAT 3, and in the "training" being taught that the team members are trained to leave activated glowsticks in the doorways to cleared rooms. Replacing that with a can of Nano-Glo Spray'd-AR(possibly mounted on the side of a weapon?) and having the ARO automatically updated to the current time (down to the second) that the mark was placed might be handy.

Posted by: Brahm Jun 9 2006, 11:43 PM

That is indeed a cool idea.

Posted by: GrinderTheTroll Jun 9 2006, 11:45 PM

I don't recall reading, but what's the limitation on what an ARO can display?

Posted by: Jaid Jun 10 2006, 12:24 AM

QUOTE (GrinderTheTroll)

I don't recall reading, but what's the limitation on what an ARO can display?

ummm.... bandwidth?

mainly the equipment of the person who's receiving it really, i suppose. obviously, you can't transmit simsense data to someone without a sim module, for example.

Posted by: BookWyrm Jun 10 2006, 12:42 AM

Sounds like a good idea. Has me thinking back of the Batman storyline No Man's Land, where each sector-street claimed had to be tagged by a specific gang symbol.

Posted by: Shrike30 Jun 10 2006, 01:08 AM

QUOTE (GrinderTheTroll)

I don't recall reading, but what's the limitation on what an ARO can display?

One of the examples they give for "spam zones" includes simsense porn. Apparently the bandwidth is significant.

My idea of an "ARO marker" was something like an RFID, which obviously limits you somewhat.

Posted by: wind_in_the_stones Jun 10 2006, 03:54 AM

Slick. Cool idea, and well written.

Not sure why you'd use it, though, because once you've got the transmitter placed, what's the point of the paint? Just program it with what you want to display. Just a style thing, I guess.

Posted by: Dranem Jun 10 2006, 07:55 AM

Cause you still want to get your message across to those who don't constantly view the world in AR.

Posted by: Edward Jun 10 2006, 01:15 PM

The paint is not usfull for most of the non tagging people. Also it couldn’t hav mor than signal 0 or 1, so the range is a bit short Container yards for example would use virtual chalk, each container has a signal 3-4 chip that holds its information, in AR it looks like a chalkboard.

Edward

Posted by: GrinderTheTroll Jun 11 2006, 01:42 AM

QUOTE (Shrike30)

QUOTE (GrinderTheTroll @ Jun 9 2006, 04:45 PM)

I don't recall reading, but what's the limitation on what an ARO can display?

That's what confused me about RFID, ARO seems to do more than I realized.

Posted by: Slump Jun 11 2006, 04:21 AM

How obvious is it that something is AR? Could you tag the wall, but have it look untagged in AR?

Posted by: ornot Jun 11 2006, 11:20 AM

QUOTE

How obvious is it that something is AR? Could you tag the wall, but have it look untagged in AR?

What would be the point of that? Might as well use regular paint. Of course I might be misunderstanding what you're getting at.

If you tagged the wall with Spray'd AR but didn't want the AR component visible I guess you could either not drop the ARO tag or possibly program said tag to only respond to a limited group of comlinks.

If you didn't want the paint to show up you'd need to use some sort of clear paint or something, but you might as well just use an RFID tag and forget the paint.

If you mean somehow rendering the paint invisible to someone using AR then IMHO no. AR overlays the real world, so you can still see the real world regardless of AROs, popups and other windows in your vision.

Posted by: Crusher Bob Jun 11 2006, 11:29 AM

Well, in theory you could hack their eyes, and then edit out the paint, but that would take a lot of time and effort.

Actually:

Hack thier eyes, gain admin access, install an agent that edits anything with certain parameters out of their visual field and you are good to go. So your agent edits out any tags that include <fnord> and...

Posted by: ornot Jun 11 2006, 11:32 AM

I doubt there's the computing power in what is effectively an RFID chip to run a hacking agent. Plus that would require the victim to have cybereyes! Still, it would be possible to hack someones eyes to remove the paint in theory, but not with this Spray'd AR stuff.

Posted by: Crusher Bob Jun 11 2006, 11:35 AM

The spray AR tag would include <fnord> if one of your eye hacked guys wanders by, the agent edits it out.

Hmm, now that I think about it, there are some great possibilities here. The cops bribe your street doc to put an agent into your cyber eyes, it records all your criminal activities, and either sends them back wirelessly, something...

So a rumor goes around that all brand X eyes do this, and send back any interesting bits when you conntect to bran X's web site for software updates.

Considering that plenty fo Joe Slopehead corp types probably have cyber eyes (and everybody has a commlink that you can do a similar job to).

Posted by: ornot Jun 11 2006, 11:47 AM

That is a cunning way of doing it! Again, a lot of time and effort and if anyone comes by that you've not hacked they would see your paint just fine. Still, would be entertaining!

This cybereye agent sounds rather like the intereceptors in Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. You'd need a lot of resources to hack/implant a large group of individuals like that though.

Posted by: Crusher Bob Jun 11 2006, 01:01 PM

Well, one of the nifty things about GiTS was that everyone had a cybebrain this makes the question about indentify harder to sidestep. If you can just ask your non-cybered friend what the thing looks like, then they become an 'objective reference' (of course, barring certain recursion problems).

Posted by: Shrike30 Jun 12 2006, 06:16 PM

QUOTE (Edward @ Jun 10 2006, 06:15 AM)

You're assuming the Longshoremen want to upgrade their technology to make the job go faster and more efficiently.

"Why wouldn't they want to go faster and more efficiently?" you ask?

Let me put it this way: they're a union, and there's a reason they currently use a clipboard and a piece of chalk.

Signal 1, IIRC (I'm at work) gives you a range of 40 meters. Indoors, 40 meters is overkill in most places for anything you might want LoS to. Outdoors, that's a decent chunk of a block away.

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How about replicating that scene from the beginning of Black Hawk Down? Spray'd-AR a big X on the top of a car, drive it to the target building, and park it outside. Easier for drones to pick up if it's got an AR presence.

Or using it to quickly define patrol areas for drones? A corporate team has just siezed a building, and the drones are on their way... the team leader gets out his can, and marks either routes on the ground, or lines across hallways to define sector borders. When the drones arrive, there's no confusion or delay while trying to map the area... they can simply start patrolling the areas that are defined by the AROs.

Marking a building as condemned or for demolition: Spray the warning on the doorways and windows, also tagging them with an ARO carrying contact information and demolition dates.

Quickly lining a parking lot or temporary road: do the lines with the paint for drivers on manual, with each space or line marked on AR for cars coming off Gridguide into your newly-paved, as-yet-unGridded area.

As a corrolary to the lining one just above, you could take this approach and use it to mark traffic diversions that aren't there, kind of like a bunch of teenagers with some stolen traffic cones creating a revision (not that I've ever done something like this

).

Triage/mass casualty handling: rather than the triage tags of old, each patient gets a blast of color (green, yellow, red, or black) with an ARO containing any information the medic had in their medicomp when they triaged the patient (vitals, extent of injuries, when they were discovered, etc).

Shadowrunners might use this stuff for blacking out security cameras: give it a blast of paint to blind it, and an ARO to mark it's presence for your buddies.

Hell, pretty much any time you need to make notes on something that are BIG and VISIBLE (things like when you're on a road and you see "GAS" sprayed in foot-high letters on the concrete with a line indicating where the pipe is, telling people not to dig there), you could also hit it with an ARO and let people know who owns the line, who you should call about problems with it, and the like.

Quickly marking an LZ for helicopters and the like, especially at night: a big glowing mark in the center of the LZ (with ARO markers for the on-board sensors to use to help guidance), and nearby hazards marked in another glowing color, with ARO markers that say "Power Line," "Tree Branch," and the like. If you're going to be in and out of the LZ repeatedly, it makes more sense than having to replace flares every 10-15 minutes.

Marking cars in a used car lot: spray the price on the windshield (using a paint that can be washed off, obviously) and popping an ARO containing the selling points of the car on while you're at it.

Posted by: GrinderTheTroll Jun 12 2006, 06:36 PM

QUOTE (Crusher Bob)

Haha! Nice Illuminati reference! That's worth 3-Karma points.

Posted by: TBRMInsanity Jun 12 2006, 06:40 PM

Funny that the first thing that came to mind was:

In war torn and underdeveloped areas if you put up a mine field sign it will be taken down and used for something. People usually use a pile of rocks (as rocks are mostly useless) to designate mine fields. This technology would be great for displaying mine fields. Infact you could almost paint where the mines where themselves so that engineers could come back later and get rid of them.

Posted by: Shrike30 Jun 12 2006, 07:43 PM

So, spraypaint for the war-torn locals to see, AROs for the high-tech mine-placers to see?

Posted by: Geekkake Jun 12 2006, 08:38 PM

QUOTE (Shrike30)

So, spraypaint for the war-torn locals to see, AROs for the high-tech mine-placers to see?

That sounds about right, given the setting.

Posted by: mdynna Jun 12 2006, 09:45 PM

QUOTE (Shrike30)

I doubt they would use this spray-paint system. More likely all the SWAT members would have their Commlinks connected so that they could mark rooms as clear purely in AR via their shared map overlays. This product would be more for a "low-tech" audience.

Posted by: Shrike30 Jun 12 2006, 10:24 PM

That works great, up until you decide to clear, say, a hydroelectric dam taken over by terrorists. Walking next to huge electrical generators might cause some communications problems.

It's the same reason that people learn military hand signs for communication and movement purposes. Sometimes, you forgot your batteries, or some equally obtuse thing screws your primary plan.

I'm not saying they wouldn't do the whole commlink/map/hypertechno solution to the problem... just that they'd probably have a redundancy.

Posted by: mdynna Jun 12 2006, 10:26 PM

Well in the huge electric generator case, a tiny weak-signal RFID wouldn't work either. You'd have to use real spray-paint.

Posted by: Shrike30 Jun 12 2006, 10:28 PM

QUOTE (mdynna)

Well in the huge electric generator case, a tiny weak-signal RFID wouldn't work either. You'd have to use real spray-paint.

QUOTE (Shrike30)

In addition to 50 color selections (including flourescent and Nano-Glo shades), Spray'd-AR has a programmable ARO cassette built into the top of the can. After programming in the text or image you want the ARO to display with your commlink, a single tap of the thumb trigger drops an ARO marker into the paint stream and fires it out of the can, where it becomes a nearly invisible part of your tag.

Posted by: TBRMInsanity Jun 15 2006, 03:20 PM

Heck if you didn't want your troops to get hurt you could put a special paint on mines that only give off a AR signal to designated comlinks that would make friendly mines bright beakons.

Posted by: Shrike30 Jun 15 2006, 08:55 PM

Having booby traps give off any sort of IFF signal is a good way to make them detectable by anybody who can send them a signal. Making them only respond to certain signals is a good way to have your troops give away their own positions and attract fire, as they walk around pinging out radio signals on a specific frequency.

Hunter-killer drones, frequency-tuned detonators... great stuff