Is there any real advantage to taking Cybereye's instead of goggles or a helmet? Yes I'm aware that cybereyes take up essance.

The usual stuff: More difficult to take away cybereyes than goggle/helmet. Sometimes, depending on location walking in with goggles/helmet can set off scrutiny. Whereas Cybereyes are less noticeable and extremely common. Walking in like Vin Diesel as Riddick with goggles or a helmet like Cobra Commander or Snake Eyes can be detrimental for 'not being obvious' purposes.

Yet Snake Eyes makes it look Good. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)

last i can recall, cybereyes count as perceiving a target for the purpose of magic. helmets, goggles, glasses, etc definitely do not.

Cybereyes can easily be made to look indistinguishable from natural eyes, so they have that stealth component to them. They beat out Contacts, which are equally concealable, by having a greater capacity and by being DNI controlled rather than wireless only.

Personally, I'm a fan of the Glasses option. It's unlikely you'll have an object that is thought of as a visual aid taken away from you, after all. And you can always turn off any suspicious HUD displays before going through security, and turn them back on after you've gotten in.

Of course, if you can pull it off, rocking Goggles gets you +20 points for style, and while it just screams "Call HTR, mutha' fragger!", a nice helmet on top of your full body armor does wonders for intimidation and badassery.

~Umi

From a fluff standpoint, Cybereyes just give so much more convenience. You cannot lose them (well, if you do you have bigger problems...), you never have to worry about your eyesight diminishing, or getting dust in your eyes, etc. They are an overall quality of life upgrade.

Until bricked by the hacker.

Keep them wireless off. Or, for the average consumer, how likely are you to have your eyes hacked? You're probably more likely to get them destroyed than hacked.

Surprised no one has mentioned it yet... as of SR5, a smartlink installed as cyberware gives a +2 dice bonus to shooting, whereas smartlink in an optical device only gives +1. (Both give +2 to accuracy IIRC)

"A wireless smartlink provides a dice pool bonus to all attacks with the weapon: +1 if you’re using gear with a smartlink or +2 if you’re using an augmentation for which you paid Essence." page 433

Holy crap I did not notice this.

So then, because a Smartlink installed in a cybereye does not take Essence, does that mean you only get the +1 dice pool bonus? As I recall previously, a magician couldn't use thermographic vision implanted in a cybereye to target for magic, but could if the thermographic implant was implanted directly into a natural eye.

I dissagree, because its "in" an augment that took up essance it still counts for the +2.

That would mean a sensor array in a cyberlimb would count, too.

No, because a smartlink is a device to display the smartgun data directly in your field of vision.

Unless your field of vision is in your arm, putting a smartlink there won't allow it to display data properly, hence it doesn't work.

~Umi

Yep, that one dice boost was totally worth the trade off of being able to be blinded by enemy hackers.

/sarcasm

Why do you have the wireless in your eyes turned on? It gives you no benefits whatsoever.

Wireless bonus: access to the freeporn channels. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

In SR4? You can take hacked googles off. you cannot take hacked cybereyes off. Actually, having cybereyes in SR5 is a very bad idea. At least if you want to actually get any relevant (dice pool) boni out of them. For IR, Lowlight, flarce comp and all the rest, googles cost less, take up no essence and perform the same (including hackability).

The optimal setup is Cybereyes R1 with Smartlink, and then wearing contacts R3 and glasses R4 over them with all the enhancements you want.

Like SR4, Cybereyes are only interesting for awakened characters (and possibly Ghouls, once they become PC options).

Smartlink is either waving hello to security hackers, or practically worthless except with shotguns. On the up side, with wide choke settings, you can disarm an entire corporate security team with a shotgun with one shot fired, so maybe it's worth that. Until the spider bricks the shotgun and it is destroyed with fire and explosions next turn, of course.

Essence loss for something you will likely never need unless you have a massive pool isn't the best investment.

It is kind of sad that the changes to smartlinks and the downsides of being a throwback are really the only thing machineguns have going for them. With belted ammo, mag changes don't matter. With only 1 fire mode, there are no changes for that. Going from 1 point of Limit boost for a non-cyber smartlink to 1 point of Limit for a throwback laser sight doesn't cost you anything either.

You can wire your gun to Smartlink glasses/goggles, and still get the +2 to Accuracy with the gun. The Dice Pool bonus is what's dependent on everything being wireless. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Uhm, yes, that's what I said. And googles cost you no essence. The bonus is still crap, but at least it's cheap crap.

Guess I missed that you said that.

Want your bonus dice from your smartgun? You need your smartlink wireless, want the bonus dice from your enhanced perception? You need it to be wireless. I am of course referring to SR5.