Oh, I just missed that. I guess dragons' can't see like normal people after all. Or maybe you are right and spirit and dragons might be able to see physical space.

It makes sense for ghouls to not, because they don't have eyes, so in order to see they either need to astrally perceive or get cyber eyes.

Maybe dragons and other critters with eyes can see normal space, and maybe spirits can't because they don't have eyes. But then how are we to know which ones can and can't?

I usually assume they can unless otherwise noted (for instance, "Ghouls are blind", they do have eyes, as far as I remember). Aside from that, it's all the "It's Magic"-simplification for me.

That, and "Street Magic" specifically states that spirits cannot perceive AR. I never liked that part as I think it was meant to read "use DNIs", but here we go. I can still work with that.

Yes, saying that they can't use DNI as a materialized spirit lacks an actual, biological nervous system, which the DNI is designed to interface with, that makes perfect sense. Saying that they can't see anything when they look at a computer screen is rather ridiculous.

There are flesh-eaters of the savory kind? O.o

They are all savory (unless you candy them). (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

so does that make you a flesh-eater-eater?

Correct, ghouls are physically blind (as part of their transformation). They cannot see on the Physical.

I just went and re-read the sections in SR4A, Street Magic (2nd Printing), and Runner's Companion.

In a nutshell, being Dual-Natured (either innately or by some power) simply makes you able to interact with both worlds. Astral Perception makes you dual-natured and it gives you a real-world penalty (-2) to do real-world actions while using Astral Perception.

For spirits and other things that are dual-natured (temp or permanent), they do not have that penalty. This means that Dragons can read a comic book if they know the language it was written in. In fact, the text (Free Spirit Perception, RC, Pg 92) says they can interact with the Physical world NORMALLY (emphasis mine) and use Perception as normal.

The only place where that is explicitly negated is in the PC Free-Spirits section of Runner's Companion and that's just to AR, electronic projections, and simsense. I believe the RAI was to ensure that PC FS didn't get augmentations, go surfing the Matrix like a decker or hacker, etc. There is simply no reason to ban them from reading books, signs, etc. Seeing light is a matter of photons striking a photo-receptor. If spirits cannot see light, then many of their powers/uses are broken/need re-work. Thus the simplest solution is allowing them to see the Physical Plane without issue when properly Materialized.

The funny thing is, any time you have a power that lets you cross the Physical / Astral boundary (in either direction), you get the ability to perceive normally in that other realm. It's been that way since SR1. I'm not certain what is so difficult about that concept except perhaps some ham-fisted word usage & editing.

To the OP: Interesting concept on using a spirit wirelessly. I am amused. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Yeah, that makes sense. Materializing must work like the inverse of astral perception. When things in physical space astrally perceive they become dual natured but see astral space. Things in the astral when materializing gain "physical sight" and become dual natured. That seems perfectly logical to me. And things that are dual natured normally can just flipflop between which ever plane they want to see...except ghouls...

The reason spirits can't interact with AR and the like might have to do with Resonance not being compatible with spirit's understanding. Resonance and magic aren't compatible after all. And if AR is being constructed by Resonance and not technology per se, that's why they can't see it or interact with it. It'd make sense based off fluff.

Lolwut. Augmented reality is not a Resonance phenomenon. It is generated by technology, specifically a commlink in conjunction with a display device (contacts, glasses, goggles, or cybereyes). I don't know where you got this idea that it springs from Resonance.

The entire Matrix is a layer of the Resonance realm, just the layer that mundanes can access. Spirits not being mundane can't even access the first layer of it. Or that's how I'm trying to think of it. AR is made from the same stuff that technomancers interact with, in an abstract sense. It's silly, sure, but magic is silly.

AR being a construct of Resonance is something I never thought of. That is an ingenious way of explaining it away in a sensible manner!

The Realms and their Connections
Resonance - Matrix - Physical - Astral - Metaplanes

In a strange way, it all makes sense. You cannot go to the Resonance Realms until you have Submerged. Same thing for going to the Metaplanes. No Initiations, no metaplanar trip for you.

Because we are native to the Physical Realm, we can reach out and touch the adjoining realms with a minor amount of effort. To go further, we have to significantly tie ourselves to that particular realm (initiate or submerge).

Spirits as natives to the Astral can easily go to the Metaplanes and with reluctance, to the Physical. They cannot do much with the Matrix because it's two realms removed from their understanding / capability. Likewise, I would suspect a Sprite cannot do anything with magic in any meaningful manner because they cannot perceive it.

That is an interesting way to explain it, nice.

I have always reasoned that spirits are unable to understand computer displays because it lacks the emotional and physical backing. Similar to why writing and such gets garbled in the Astral (Even the astral shadows of writing is illegible in the astral, it get's garbled). While materialized, spirits can see and understand more physical objects, maybe, but computer displays and other communication coming through the matrix is yet another level of detachment that they can't truly overcome as entirely magical creatures. I see it as just another example of the disconnect (and incompatibility) between magic and technology, and how they struggle (and mostly fail) to interact well.

Yeah, I'd think something like a alchera (Street Magic p115) is like AR. So say something like a machine sprite might not even be able to see them using sensors, but of course there is no fluff or crunch to say this is the case, but I think it makes sense. If Spirits can't see AR, I'd think Sprites can't see astral constructs. Should be interesting if we start to see technology get to the point where holograms can be physical, maybe sprites can manifest in to the real world, but never see any spirits and visa versa.

Spirits not being able to read computer screens is dumb. The whole concept of Resonance is also dumb. Use one dumb idea to handwave the dumbness of another? Sure, why the fuck not.

*recursive facepalm*

Its no dumber then magic.

The idea is that technology has become so advance that its beyond our understanding and out of our control now. That's why it doesn't act like real world technology. That's why there are things that cannot be explained that happens on the Matrix. That's kind of a cyberpunk trope. And technology and magic not mixing is a fantasy trope. I fail to see why keeping both of these tropes in a fantasy cyberpunk setting seems so offensive to you.

i REALLY like this idea, I'm totally stealing it! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

one minor nitpick, spirits are native to the metaplanes i think,similarly for sprites.

*edit* the more I think about this idea, the more I like it. Spirits (native to the metaplanes) can access the astral very easily, as it's just one "step" away. Accessing the physical is much harder because it's farther away, and they're only able to do so in a limited fashion (mat/poss, etc). Going 3 steps away is just too difficult for them. This can be reversed for sprites too.

I think it might be simpler than all of this.

I see that the spirit lacks the context to understand the electrons bombarding the display device (be it a monitor, AR, or VR) they can detect the presence but understanding the content is what prevents them from reacting to the information properly. Spirits and the Metaplanes in which they 'naturally' reside is based on emotive content and raw Ideas (Fire, Air, Water, Death, Hearth, and such).

While the Spirit can perceve the noises metahumanity makes, what they understand is the emotion and iedas that the generator/sender intends the noises to convey. Buy the reverse concept; Sprites are the hyper-logic step-children of the Spirits, as it were, and can understand the language/logic but the emotion of the noise is without a translation matrix as it were.

In fact, Resonance is considerably dumber than magic. Technology out of control is fine; technology spontaneously developing its own pocket universe is both ludicrous and moronic. The Matrix is not a separate plane of existence! You are flying in the face of both established SR canon and the source material it draws on, from Neuromancer on down. I'm perfectly fine with SR technology not acting like RL technology: it isn't RL technology. Resonance is the Shadowrun equivalent of midi-chlorians: it's an answer to a question that nobody asked, and is a particularly dumb and pointless answer on top of that.

I understand you hate the Resonance, and nothing I say will change your mind (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

BUT I feel that Neuromancer has something approaching the Resonance. Look at the Finn character, showing up after he's dead as some kind of AI. At the end of Neuromancer, they go "somewhere" to meet an alien AI. Look at the loa as they're presented - Mona has the biochips, she's basically a technomancer that gets possessed by free sprites.

All these could be interpreted as Resonance I think.

Finn's little robo-bunker is explicitly a ROM construct, a recording of the Finn's personality, same as the Dixie Flatline's construct that Case, Molly, and Armitage stole from Sense/Net in the first book. The loa are described (by Beauvoir in Count Zero, IIRC) as the shards/children of a merger between the alien AI and the AI that was, itself, the product of a merger between Wintermute and Neuromancer. The loa adopt the trappings of vodoun mysticism, but nowhere - nowhere - is there even a hint that they are anything other than software entities running, perhaps distributedly, on physical hardware. Mona's bioware is nothing more or less than a custom-built interface for the loa. Recall also that Bobby gets ridden by Baron Samedi in the climax of Count Zero.

You're really stretching. William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy definitely has themes of technology getting away from us, but it's still technology, not some bizarre magic-analogue that suddenly springs into being ex nihilo.