AR, VR, and sim FAQ, Answers to your questions Options

[Buster]

1) How do I experience VR? (What's a sim module for?)
A: A commlink, a sim module (commlink accessory), and a DNI (Direct Neural Interface) is needed to experience full VR such as full-VR matrix running and VR games (SR4 p228). The user connects to the DNI, the DNI connects to the sim module in the commlink, and the commlink+sim module connects to the external environment such as the matrix or a BTL chip. With the illegal hot-sim modification, the commlink+sim module can be used for hot-sim-VR matrix running and BTL chips. A datajack alone can also be used to access BTL chips (SR4 p331). A sim module is NOT necessary for experiencing AR, but it can be used for that (SR4 p209 Augmented Reality). Sim modules are only necessary to experience simsense and sim emotions. While running in VR mode, your physical body goes completely limp so you better be sitting/laying in a comfortable position before you hit the switch. While in AR mode, the sim module does not paralyze your body.

2) What is a DNI (Direct Neural Interface) device?
A: Trodes, nanopaste trodes, datajack, or cyberware/internal commlink.

3) How do I experience AR?
A: In order to experience AR, you need a commlink (either electronic or cybernetic) and some sort of sensory receiving device. The sensory receiving device can be electronic, cybernetic, or a sim module running in AR mode. Electronic sensory receiving devices include contacts/glasses/goggles for vision, earphones/earbuds for sound, AR gloves and/or feedback clothing for (crude) tactile sensations (SR4 p209 Augmented Reality 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th paragraphs). Cyberware sensory receiving devices include cybereyes and cyberears (SR4 p228-9). By using your commlink and a sim module in AR-mode you can view AR the natural way (by pumping it straight into your brain :D ). While in AR mode, the sim module does not paralyze your body. Your commlink can communicate with your sensory receiving devices via wireless, skinlinks, or (if cyberware) direct hardwire. Direct hardwire can be included between any cyberware devices for no extra cost or essence loss. A sim module is a commlink accessory that can be built into the commlink.

4) How do I control AR?
A: You can control AR through AR gloves, feedback clothes, or a DNI control device such as trodes, nanotrodes, datajack, or internal commlinks (SR4 p209 Augmented Reality).

5) How do I connect my devices to the matrix in order to experience AR?
A: All devices (including cyber) are wireless-enabled by default, so they are always connected to the matrix, all the time. You can also add skinlinks to devices and connect those skinlinked devices to a wireless enabled device. If you then turn off wireless on those other devices, this creates chokepoints in your PAN (Personal Area Network) and protects your devices from hacking. For example, you can leave your commlink (with tons of security software) wireless, but disconnect wireless from all your other devices and connect all your other PAN devices to your commlink via skinlink. A hacker would then have to get through your wireless comlink before reaching your other devices. Of course you could just add uber-security to each of your wireless devices, but the chokepoint method saves money.

6) Can non-metahumans experience VR or AR?
A: Since VR needs a DNI, only metahumans can experience full VR. Even possessing cannot experience VR or any other DNI through their host. However, flesh form inhabiting spirits CAN use DNI and therefore VR (Street Magic p100). Any non-metahuman can experience AR through the appropriate interfaces (as long as they can physically see/manipulate the device).

[Jaid]

6) inhabiting spirits *can* use VR, provided it's a flesh form merge and the host had the needed implants etc stuck in him before being inhabited.

just out of curiosity... is there a reason you haven't indicated whether these are 'official' or not?

[Buster]

Haven't had time to look up the page numbers. Feel free to contribute though, I'll update the top post with any contributions. By the way, do you have a page number/link for number 6?

[Synner667]

[Whipstitch]

In Dragons of the Sixth world, Captain Chaos said he's got sources that say the great dragon Celedyr is quite the 'trix junkie...

[Adarael]

Note: Just because a piece of cyberware is wired into the brain does not mean it can work as a DNI. Cybereyes are directly neurally wired, but there's no reason to wire an eye into the olfactory centers of your brain.
Eyes and ears cannot be used as wireless hubs for VR control your comlink through, because they are not a 'direct neural interface' object. They interface with your neural network directly, but they're not the same.
So your list of DNIs is slightly wrong. It should read:

Trodes, nanopaste trodes, datajack, internal commlink or any cyberware with DNI modification, such as a cyberarm datajack.

[Synner667]

Also, I'm not sure that 'trodes should be considered DNI..
..Since they are placed onto the skin, that's not a Direct Neural Interface.

[Jaid]

[Buster]

Updated top post with clarifications and page numbers.

[Jaid]

[Buster]

Cool, thx for the reference.

[Dashifen]

I wonder if it's worth mentioning Technomancers and how they interact with AR/VR differently than others (that is, lacking the _need_ for a "normal" commlink, etc.).

[kigmatzomat]

Might want to point out that DNI is possible for non meta human races but it requires a significant amount of brain scans so it is non-trivial, requiring a significant cash pile.

And for the person quibbling about trodes, "direct neural interface" means data gets from outside the body into the brain without going through other sense organs. Reading text on paper is indirect. Reading text beamed into your brain is direct.

[Eleazar]

We really need to get a sticky with links to threads like these. Thank you for this Buster. I don't have anything to expand on at the moment.

[Synner667]

[Jaid]

[Fortune]

[OneSeventeen]

It is unclear to me exactly what one needs to give commands mentally to their commlink while using AR. If I have, say, goggles... I need something else. Is that thing a Datajack (if so, do I need to bother with the goggles?)? Same with trodes. It seems like having the actual physical jack is pretty needless. Who'd plug their comm into their head if the same hardware could do it across the airwaves? I mean--I guess you circumvent jamming and snooping, but I'm thinking for something non-sensitive like reading cat-owner blogs or something.

I guess my question is this: Is there some implant that works like a datajack, but isn't externally visible or is that piece of hardware, in fact, the datajack?


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[Jaid]

[PlatonicPimp]

You need an DNI (trodes, datajack, etc) in order to send signal to your commlink. Now you still need something in order to see the data, in addition to the DNI. It could be those goggles you sport, or it could be a simsense module. Either way, trodes alone won't cut it.

[OneSeventeen]

When you go full VR, the trodes send a signal to your brain, do they not? Or the datajack does, anyway. So does it need to override your motor functions, etc. to do that, or can it simply give you a visual over-lay? I'd buy having to have a Sim module or goggles or something for a trode net, but I was under the impression that a datajack included the ASIST machinery, so to speak. Not so?


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[Jérémie]

A Datajack is not a Sim Module.

But there's nowhere written that Datajack are one-way only. If (with the help of a Sim Module) they can be used to brain-talk to a commlink, go into VR, they could be used to send data (for say... images) into your brain.

Ergo, I'm not so sure about needing a visual interface (google, cybereyes, whatever) for AR when one has a DNI in place.

[PlatonicPimp]

You're confusing a few thing her.

The sim module is required for full VR, yes. That doesn't mean it doesn't handle AR as well. You seem to be assuming that unless you are in full VR, you are not engaging the sim module. This isn't true. All the virtual components in AR are handled Via sim module if you set them to do so. Any, ANY virtual sensory information is fed through DNI via sim-module. It doesn't matter if it's VR or AR, it's still virtual sensory information. Think of the DNI as your keyboard and mouse, and the sim module is your screen and speakers.

Without that sim module, you need some other way of displaying the virtual information, like glasses and earplugs. DNI won't cut it. The data could get sent, but without a Sim module nothing you have can make sense of it.

[Demonseed Elite]

Yeah, a datajack will not send visual imagery to your brain. Or rather, even if it did, it'd be garbage signal that your brain wouldn't know what to do with. It can send visual imagery to your cybereyes, which can display the visual imagery over your natural vision. Or you could have a sim module which will take that visual imagery and put it into a language that your brain can understand. The sim module fools the brain into thinking this visual imagery *is* what your visual organs are seeing.

[OneSeventeen]

Ahha. So... You need one from each list, here to get anything at all done with your commlink:

Datajack, trodes, manual input device

Sim module, cyber-outputs (eyes, ears, whatever), manual outputs (goggles, earbuds, whatever)

Does it sound like I've got an understanding now?


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