Help with Ultrasound and Radar Sensors, Where is the difference rulewise? Options

[Meschler]

He Folks,

i hope you can help with the above question. Where is the difference between this two cyber devices? As far as my reading goes the ultrasound sensor and the radar sensor (the cyber one) are almost the same. The yber radar sensor is even better due to his ability in penetrating walls. Is there any situation the ultrasound sensor is better and hold his ground against the radar sensor?

Thank you for your help.

Best wishes,
Meschler

[Neraph]

They are mechanically identical. From what I understand, one is an implanted form of the other one.

[Glyph]

Ultrasound and radar sensors both create a 3-D overlay that replaces the user's normal vision. They are good at detecting invisible things and reducing visual penalties for things such as low light, but can't detect things such as color.

Ultrasound can be set to a passive mode, where it can pick up other ultrasound sources, such as motion detectors. It can be foiled by sound-deadening spells such as stealth or silence. It can't see through walls - it can't even see through windows.

Radar is more generally useful, since it can see through walls and be used to detect weapons and cyberware on people. But there are anti-radar coatings available, it can broadcast your position to enemy radar, and it is susceptible to jamming.

They are both headware (although you can get the equivalent of ultrasound from either a SURGE power, or from combining echolocation bioware with cyber/bio/adept hearing and vocal enhancements). They are not identical, but they do both use the same visibility modifiers.

[Neraph]

Oh, my bad. I thought he was talking about the Implanted Radar and the Ultrawideband radar from Arsenal.

[TheOOB]

While the end result is similar, a radar uses electromagnetic waves, which can penetrate objects but are easy to detect/jam, and ultrasound uses sound waves, which can't penetrate most objects but can only be picked up by an ultrasound sensor in passive mode.

EDIT: Or like a dolphin or something, natch.

[Dragnar]

The newest corp security device: Bats glued to the walls. If they wiggle the evil ultrasound runner is near. Nah, I think I stay with the tech stuff.

Wait, paranormal homing killer bats patrolling the perimeter, I may be on to something...

[Heath Robinson]

Wait, paranormal homing killer bats patrolling the perimeter, I may be on to something...

Don't forget to biodrone them.

[AllTheNothing]

The newest corp security device: Bats glued to the walls. If they wiggle the evil ultrasound runner is near. Nah, I think I stay with the tech stuff.

Wait, paranormal homing killer bats patrolling the perimeter, I may be on to something...

I would suggest something like a biodrone swarm ready to iniect some weaponized nanites or toxines like Ymir, things like surtur, fragging patroling spirits, showers of taggants, a mob of drunken humanis assholes (no they don't know what the hell are they doing there, but they are there, they and the security in riot control asset who is trying to arrest just about anyone) or an army of Bubba the love troll clones......... well, maybe you should tell what kind of corporate facility is about to be hit (a factory that produces radars?).

[Neraph]

While the end result is similar, a radar uses electromagnetic waves, which can penetrate objects but are easy to detect/jam, and ultrasound uses sound waves, which can't penetrate most objects but can only be picked up by an ultrasound sensor in passive mode.

EDIT: Or like a dolphin or something, natch.

In fact, ultrasound sensors are fooled by windows.

[TheOOB]

In fact, ultrasound sensors are fooled by windows.

You can hold up a sheet and make it so an ultra sound can't tell the difference between you and a wall.

[AllTheNothing]

You can hold up a sheet and make it so an ultra sound can't tell the difference between you and a wall.

Indeed! Well maybe not. Ultrasound would tell you that something is there and a relative distance, you still have to blend its shape in the surrounding (what is doing a piece of wall in the midle of an empty room?) otherwise the ultrasound system won't know that something is wrong but the guy using it will recive incoerent feedbak that will raise a warning flag (the reason is that, unlike CPUs that can just execute and process code, brain thinkes).

[TheOOB]

It all depends on the sophistication of the unit and how anal the settings are. The more sensitive you make, the more false positives you get and thus the more time and resources you waste. The important point is that there are ways to sneak past the sensor, if you pin yourself against the wall with a sheet and move slowly it may just not notice you(infiltration vs device rating anyone?) and you can do the same to radar, generating an ECM to screw it up, which considering the amount of electronic devices won't cause to much problems unless you do it for a long time or they are really jumpy about security.

[AllTheNothing]

It all depends on the sophistication of the unit and how anal the settings are. The more sensitive you make, the more false positives you get and thus the more time and resources you waste. The important point is that there are ways to sneak past the sensor, if you pin yourself against the wall with a sheet and move slowly it may just not notice you(infiltration vs device rating anyone?) and you can do the same to radar, generating an ECM to screw it up, which considering the amount of electronic devices won't cause to much problems unless you do it for a long time or they are really jumpy about security.

The basic mechanism on which is reflection of sound. Sound is emitted, travels trough air, hits a surface that reflectes it and retrnes to the source; by taking note fo the direction from wich comes the echo and the time that passed betwen the sound being emited and being recived (at lest its reflection) you can deduce the direction and the distance; from the distortion you can attempt to determine the shape of the surface being hit.
The sound also is not as precise as electromagnetic waves, it is based on vibrations that propagates due molecular collision of the gasses, there is much more dispersion and distorion involved, so making out shapes is hard. At best the sensor can track the evolution in the signature of the enviroment setting of the allert in the form of a feed sent to the spider who reviews it and decides what has to be done.
I was pointing out that you can't just pretend to be a wall in the midle of nothing and that you might be able to fool a sensor but if the other side of it there's a (meta)human things can still go wrong (computers work in matematical terms and so they lack the flexibility of human mind, what is fiendishly hard for them to pinpoint could be obvious to human mind).