While thumbing down my SR4A again I came across this implant.
The immediate use is pretty clear - submit tactile informations to the user.

My question is: Does this Implant subsume the functions of AR Gloves? While the Gloves provide the means to manually interact with the AR, the Touchlink doesn't state so.
I'd trend to say this is the cyberware version of AR-Gloves.

Your opinions on that?

AR is still simsense (if you want), which means a simple DNI (like trodes) fully handles it. I didn't mean to confuse anyone by saying they're the *same* thing. Simsense is not limited to 'going into VR'. DNI (general purpose, like trodes, as opposed the specific DNI of a cyberlimb) can do *everything*: input, output, mental commands, mental text 'telepathy', simsense input, etc. Anything. For simsense output, you do need the upgraded version of trodes, the simrig.

Which means you CAN use a commlink + trodes for every day AR activities. Yet if you want the full AR feedback instead of the "imaginary" one you would use SimSense, correct?

Eh. I'm pretty sure you *are* using simsense when you get AR from your commlink+trodes in the first place. Simsense is video, audio, whatever. Simsense is your smartgun's aim-dot and your mental video-conference calls. (Warning: not saying all video is simsense. Hehe.) See SR4A p219: And p220:
So, I don't see a difference between tactile and visual AR (also assuming that tactile AR is somehow 'full' when visual is not). It's all equally real and imaginary. (I was kinda kidding about 'realer than real' earlier, because that's technically only BTL/UV).

I honestly don't know why you'd ever use AR Gloves, nor why so many Sample Runners have them.

Nostalgia? Familiarity with older ideas of how this kind of tech would work?

The annoying small size of most touchpads on CommLinks that prevent Dwarves, Orks, and Trolls from using them with their thick fingers?

Makes sense to me. Possibly if the Commlink is one of those ones that is too small to have a manual interface, too.

Right, but I wasn't asking 'gloves over chiclet keyboard'. I was asking 'gloves over trodes'. Or datajack/whatever. Tactile output isn't very useful compared to visual anyway, so you'll definitely need glasses/contacts/imagelink, if not a general DNI anyway… and it says you can use those glasses for controls.

You aren't. The trodes allow you to control the commlink telepathically. You can't use trodes to view a video saved on your commlink - you need an image link in your cybereyes or glasses/contact lenses. Same for the smartgun system - trodes allow you to tell the gun to change mode, but to make use of the crosshairs you need some way to display it in your vision and this function is beyond what DNI is about. You don't even need DNI to use a smartgun system - you just need your smartgun and your image-linked shades to be talking to each other.

Simsense is where the right hardware (a simsense module) puts the image in your vision at the mental level. Your eyes and optic nerve are bypassed in this set-up. Whether using an image link or simsense the effect is essentially the same - you see it. DNI on its own cannot replace either means. Read a description of a cat. Now go and look at a cat. That's the difference.

Maybe. But do you NEED a sim-module for every day AR activities or not? Because the DNI paragraph suggests that you CAN interact with AR without anything else than a commlink and a DNI.

That's wrong, Aerospider. Read the quotes.

I'm assuming you *do* have a sim module, because it'd be stupid not to. They're cheap, and required.

It's not that complicated. DNI (alone) is mental control. DNI+sim module is mental input/output (simrig) of everything a person can possibly experience (except magic). AR can be experienced via everything from a little vid screen to full simsense; once again, neither DNI nor simsense are required for AR. Simsense happens to be the *easiest* way to get AR (visual, aural, tactile, everything), and you'll also have full mental control at the same time, because you already have the required DNI.

Gee. The paragraph at p.58 in Unwired says that DNI is capable of transmitting feedback from devices as sending your mental commands to them. It ALSO says that the feedback from DNI is like mental imagery thus suggesting that DNI alone is capable of producing images, sounds etc. in your mind. Which would mean you could use a commlink and DNI alone to Access a video/audio AR-Overlay. But it's in your head like a thought rather than artifical sensory input like simsense produces.



Question is... is DNI capable of this alone or does the second marked sentence assume you already are using a sim module? If yes... that would again be rather copious. Both the sim module and the DNI are described as being capable of translating neuronal signals into machine code and vice versa.

I myself understand the second marked sentence in a maybe too complicated way. It says that DNI alone is capable of giving understandable feedback. Which would mean DNI and a sim module MAY interoperate but to experience AR you ONLY need one of those two. Which one you take is a matter of taste and the exact bandwith of feedback you want to have. Either pure mentally (DNI) or with all senses (SimSense). In the end both would allow to have a video conference. DNI would be like talking to an imaginary person in your thoughts, seeing his/her face in your mind, hearing his/hear talk in your thoughts. SimSense would be like literary seeing the person in front of you (or in a AR-Window) while literary hearing his/her voice in your ears.
That would contradict the whole reason to use a sim module for everything else than full AR feedback and VR.

Yep, it's a fluff-thing. For example, playing an AR boxing game by pure thought is not going to be very satisfying, but for the player who just wants to get things done DNI is the way to go.

Where exactly did I contradict them?


Oh right. You didn't say or imply that.


Pretty much, but a simrig is something else, for recording the sensory output for playback purposes.

None of the quoted section concerns a sim module. DNI allows interaction between the brain and electronic devices. A sim module can be added to translate the device's communication into sensory 'languages', but it's just dead weight if there's no DNI to allow the communication to begin with.

DNI just means that some chip can talk to the nerves directly in their own language. This then allows a person to control a device without having to move a part of their body or fumble with buttons and such. Simsense build on top of that to create "false" sensory data, either on top of the real thing or fully overriding (allowing a person to live a movie anywhere, any time). The matrix computer systems builds on that again to allow interactivity in a virtual environment (earlier books called it ASIST, but i do not recall it being mentioned in any of the SR4 books).

I swear, they could have written a book the size of SR4A on the various layers of the SR computer systems alone and people would still not get it. Given that i am surprised the internet works at all.

It's not that I don't get what a sim module is good for. Yet, the DNI paragraph looked like I've got something wrong. Maybe the paragraph itself. My bad.

Actually, ASIST is the precurser to Simsense. And it's mentioned in the "History Lesson for the reality Impaired" chapter, Techsplosion, pg. 27, SR4A

Like I said, half formed memories. Just get the audio/visual link accessories, it'll save some headaches, whether you have DNI, or Simsense, or not.

Funny, older editions gave the impression that simsense came first and then the military built on that when setting up Echo Mirage.

And checking the text, it is not so much that ASIST is the precursor but rather that they are the same thing. Kinda like how in the mobile phone world the marketing always talks about 2G, 3G, 4G, while the techs talk about GSM, UMTS, LTE and so on.

Which is exactly what I said: Most devices have a limited DNI functionality (which means they need to have a stripped-down sim module or something similar) which allows the user to use that device via DNI. They do not, however, have the full-blown interface for every kind of data, that needs a dedicated sim module.


No. And even if a sentence in a sourcebook said exactly that, it would simply be an error. DNI is the technology for the physical transmission. If there is nothing to generate the simsense signal sent over that connection, the connection is pointless.

I'd say the writer used to term "using DNI" in the same meaning as I am accessing this forum via Wifi and somebody else via Fiber-to-the-Curb. The Airwaves and fiberglass won't do nothing, but who wants to rattle down the whole OSI stack? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Sounds reasonable.

Aerospider, I think you'll find I very clearly gave the sim module assumption, because we're talking about AR-as-simsense. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Here's the exact quote I gave earlier, and you'll see it explicitly mentions the sim module:
As I said: DNI-alone is mental controls (in and out), DNI+sim module is omnisense-input, mental controls out, and simrig (which is a DNI) is omni input/output.

Yerameyahu -

"Eh. I'm pretty sure you *are* using simsense when you get AR from your commlink+trodes in the first place."

To me that says one can use simsense without a sim module, but if you say it doesn't then ok (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Oh lovely confusion thy name shalt be SR4A!

You know, some images of CommLinks would be very helpful in a lot of ways. As well as rules for custom cases.

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You know...