[X] My Assistant

[Kanada Ten]

Ruthenium polymer basically turns a surface into high defination television; so it can show Mr. Ed even in the middle of the night. It's scanners that allow it to make your car "seem" invisible by recording the world around you and displaying it in the correct position on the painted object.

[Shrike30]

Why wouldn't it? It has to be able to give off light to be able to replicate the background behind it...

[Witness]

To replicate it perfectly, yes. But I didn't think that stuff was quite at the 'make me completely invisible' level yet. I guess I'd thought of it much more as a kind of electronic paper technology: still potentially damn good for camouflage if it's linked to image sensors, but only in the way that a Chameleon is good at camouflage. That beastie matches the background, but it doesn't glow.
Still, even if I was right about that I guess there'd be nothing to stop you making it semi-transparent and then having a light-emitting layer underneath.

[Shrike30]

I always figured that for things like standing near a light source, you'd pretty much *have* to be emitting light, not just be reflective.

[Witness]

Well not necessarily. Take natural camouflage, like- oh... dolphins or something. The light source is above, so they evolve light-colored bellys. They don't need to emit light for that to be a good camouflage.
At any rate, I'm still probably wrong about SR ruthenium polymers. Was just explaining my reasoning is all.

[Butterblume]

To make a plane nearly invisible from ground at night, you have to illuminate it. A little bit ;). Else it would be darker than the the sky, and therefor easy to spot.

[Witness]

Um no. Not easy to spot. Not at night, even if it's painted bright pink! ;) (EDIT: though a navy blue would be better than black, admittedly)
This is all a matter of degree. I'm not saying light-emission wouldn't make for much better camouflage, just that you can get pretty good camouflage without it.

[Shrike30]

Yeah, but there's ways in which that breaks down, and for ruthenium polymer's intended environment, those are pretty big ways.

Dude in a suit jogs across a field. In the background of this field is a bigass concrete wall, with spotlights sweeping it (think a prison). If the ruthenium polymer emits light, he's fine. If it just turns the color of whatever's behind it, he's going to make a bigass dark gray silohette against that wall for anyone looking "through" him at it.

[Witness]

Well yeah. But are we saying that a ruthenium polymer Chameleon suit (p316), even if it can emit light (and I concede it probably can) gives perfect invisibility, or even Predator-level invisibility?
I'd assumed it was quite good, but not quite that good. It's only -4 to perception, after all. Equivalent to a guard with normal vision spotting a perp through heavy fog, not equivalent to trying to spot the perp in total darkness.

[Kanada Ten]

It was much better in SR3 (beyond blind fire!). But like you said above, one could always put photovoltic below the ruthenium polymer to make it glow if the GM ruled it did not.

[Witness]

This has reminded me of that daft invisible car in Die Another Day.
You know. The one that Bond hides behind. ;)

[Shrike30]

Witness: SR3's ruthenium polymer, if you were willing to put enough :nuyen: into it, could get you something like a +12 on visual perception checks (blind fire was only a +8). I have a feeling the chameleon suit is intended to not go quite that far for balance purposes.

It's also got noticeably more armor built into it than you could really get with ruthenium polymer from SR3, since ruth poly knocked half of the armor value off whatever you put it on. The most common build I saw was Light Security Armor (with Security Helmet) modded with ruth poly, which ran about as good as a plated armor vest.