[X] My Assistant

[Kruger]

Oh, it would definitely catch on. It just seems to me it would end up being a fad, and once the novelty of it wore off, it would fade away. Human beings are social creatures. Some of us socialize in different ways, sure. But that's why there are different venues. A virtual/physical club is mixing two different demographics. The gimmick would be cool for a while, but in the end, people go to clubs for a reason, and people who don't, don't for a reason.

You're right about rallies and conferences and such. The technology is really only a step up from the virtual conferencing that exists today. The ability to virtually "attend" a political rally or something else would definitely be technology people would be interested in.

Not so sure about concerts though. Not that people wouldn't like it. They definitely would. But it seems like it might cut down on the total revenue that can be generated and the longevity of the tour. If that was the case, the promoters and record execs would definitely be very selective about what concerts or events one could virtually attend. The Rolling Stones "Leonization Rocks!" Tour? Maybe. The hottest new pop sensation? Probably not. That ruins the exclusivity of actually attending.

[Malachi]

I have always played it that when you are in AR your persona appears in any nodes that you subscribe to, just as if you were in VR. The only difference is the method with which you control and receive feedback from that persona. Granted a persona/icon controlled via AR means would probably look "stiff" and slow to respond (as others have mentioned), but in all other respects it can do anything in the node that a persona in VR can do.

[hobgoblin]

The one thing not to forget is that for the VR user, being there virtually would be like being there in the flesh as all the senses gets simulated via the ASIST interface. So it is in no way comparable to someone today attending by way of webcam from the easy chair at home. And anyone using AR via trodes (and to a lesser extent gloves and glasses) could also interact with the person to the point of touching (or even smelling). The only issue would be passing them physical objects.

[hobgoblin]

I have always played it that when you are in AR your persona appears in any nodes that you subscribe to, just as if you were in VR. The only difference is the method with which you control and receive feedback from that persona. Granted a persona/icon controlled via AR means would probably look "stiff" and slow to respond (as others have mentioned), but in all other respects it can do anything in the node that a persona in VR can do.

And that would probably be the correct way of doing it. This as there is no real separation of icon and persona, expect that icons are a subset of the persona (or a persona is a superset of icons). The icon is just the multimedia part of the persona, so that someone quickly glancing over the "local" area could spot them (much like how a distinct icon on the desktop is easier to spot then having to read a long list of text to spot the right title, only that in SR those icons are singing and dancing if the designer wants them to).

But a potential issue comes to mind. How do a persona step into the seattle streets? Is there a unmentioned super-node for the greater seattle area, that every AR user walking down the street is logged into (hardly, as the SR effects are supposedly broadcasted as ARO). So can a VR user basically make his persona broadcast some kind of ARO version of its icon, and in that way appear somewhere for anyone using AR nearby? I wonder if this is a issue with SR4 rules: that while the AR and VR rules overlap, VR seems stuck in SR3 on key issues. As in, VR exist, AR exist, there is some overlap, but VR do not build on top of AR or vice versa.

[Yerameyahu]

I guess that's because Matrix isn't Astral; it's not a reflection of the real world. VR is node-centric, and different for every node. The Matrix is not *for* walking down the street and seeing people (unless you're running some kind of Foursquare social network thing, of course!).

[Inca]

I don't see any contradictions. It's not like AR is the matrix overlayed on real life....it's totally separate from VR sculpting. There's no seattle streets in VR..... I seriously doubt someone has coded a whole exact replica of seattle to be the sculpting for some node.
AR just creates icons and graphics that pop up overlayed on the senses responding to different things the visual cortex and perhaps audio brain receptors receive from the real world. Like if your eyes passed over a nice jacket in a street window....you would see a little icon pop up next to the jacket running an advertisement or something.....or if you looked up at a cloudy sky...a blue sky would be overlayed....although I feel it would have to look like really good CGI because the only computer generated images that actually look real are in UV nodes.
Now I feel the matrix doesn't really look like anything to AR users like was said above...it's just a bunch of code and websites....however i remember reading in fluff that you could open up a window and see the matrix sculpting of nodes....kind of like as if you were playing Quake Live ...like a FPS.

The original question was about what a VR user sees when an AR user is in a node with him or her. Like was said above...i think it would be a lot like when you use a skill like mining or some emote in WoW......just a canned animation. So hacking, scanning.....or dancing in a club....would be a canned animation so that VR users could understand it. So the AR user would just type "dance" in a little window and then then his VR icon dances....and maybe he sees it if he's got a little window open to the VR sculpting of the node...but he doesn't have to...and it's not very useful to him. Once he switches into VR however, all that visual stuff becomes incredibly important. He no longer has to type "goto dance floor 7" while in AR....he just wills himself there.

[Kruger]

The one thing not to forget is that for the VR user, being there virtually would be like being there in the flesh as all the senses gets simulated via the ASIST interface. So it is in no way comparable to someone today attending by way of webcam from the easy chair at home. And anyone using AR via trodes (and to a lesser extent gloves and glasses) could also interact with the person to the point of touching (or even smelling).

Hence the creepy stalkers using it, heh.

My understanding of AR is that the AR users wouldn't get any kind of physical feedback unless they were using simsense. And at that point, you're going to be acting "virtually" since your awareness of the other physical patrons would be significantly lowered. Now you just have a club full of people stumbling into eachother. Well, I guess it's no worse than a street full of people paying more attention to their AR than their surroundings stumbling into eachother, lol.

The interaction of AR and VR is just one of those things you have to choose to accept or choose not to. Like the old "Reality Filters" from the earlier editions. Can you imagine the kind of processing power it would take to completely warp the Matrix to appear as you wanted it to? Forcing your cyberdeck to fully load and then reload and reskin everything you came across? And what serious decker would sacrifice anything that could cost them, even in microseconds, response time? I'm sure the RF would be fun for tooling along in the Matrix, but nobody is going to strain their processors trying to make Mitsuhama's stone garden look like Disneyland when the difference is getting burned by Pluto or slipping past that digital samurai.

[suoq]

How do a persona step into the seattle streets?

I don't see how they would or why they would need to. It's a virtual world, not a physical world.

I can see a club with a lot of AR simply not letting Virtual People in. Their theme is to enhance a real physical experience, not create a new virtual experience. It's Reality+ not Second Life.

And the connections between Nodes isn't necessarily physical. From a node perspective, it's more in the club owner's interest to connect all the nodes for the clubs he owns than to connect to the unrestricted street. That way a happening in Seattle can be part of the augmentation happening in Boston. (All the clubs connected to each other for New Years, as an example.)

In the physical world, not all clubs are open to all people.
In the virtual world, not all nodes are open to all people or connected to other nearby nodes. (i.e. when you leave the club and go to the street, you get logged out of their AR. If you want street AR, log into the street.)

Edit: Thinking about an upscale AR club, I'm thinking Wi-fi inhibiting wallpaper. Come in the entrance, have them check you SIN and membership. Once you pass, you go down the hall and through the door. The hallway design is perpendicular to the street and internal matrix device so there's never a matrix channel to the street. Once you're in, you're connected to an AR node that has nothing to do with the outside world.

[Yerameyahu]

Reality Filter is in the current edition, and it specifically increases your Response (when it works). Kind of a gamble, but that's exactly what it's for.

[hobgoblin]

I don't see how they would or why they would need to. It's a virtual world, not a physical world.

Virtually hanging out with their AR using chummers perhaps?

One concept i have in mind is when a team is breaking into a place, the hacker can have his persona walk along side the team. This to aid in interaction (and at table playability), but would require that the persona can "know" about the area around the team.

[hobgoblin]

My understanding of AR is that the AR users wouldn't get any kind of physical feedback unless they were using simsense. And at that point, you're going to be acting "virtually" since your awareness of the other physical patrons would be significantly lowered. Now you just have a club full of people stumbling into eachother. Well, I guess it's no worse than a street full of people paying more attention to their AR than their surroundings stumbling into eachother, lol.

Gloves provide feedback on anything "touched" (hell, they can be used to sense real data about physcial objects). And there are feedback clothing and specific implants (olfactory and taste booster, touchlink) that allow a person to have the sensory data of a simsense user, without using simsense.

[Yerameyahu]

Personally, I always use AR with trodes, so various senses are indeed an option.

[Kruger]

Gloves provide feedback on anything "touched" (hell, they can be used to sense real data about physcial objects). And there are feedback clothing and specific implants (olfactory and taste booster, touchlink) that allow a person to have the sensory data of a simsense user, without using simsense.

That's still using simsense you realize, right? Simsense covers more ground than just the concept of slapping on the rig to experience a full submersion experience like BTL.

Regardless, it seems like a lot of effort to go through for the AR user to be able to interact with the VR patrons and not much with the real world ones. And you're still not actually interacting with someone, just virtually. Why bother going to the club at all? Seems like you could get virtually molested for cheaper using just typical simsense or a VR chatroom.

Though, it does make for an interesting idea for some kind of AR corporate getaway retreat for sexually frustrated sararimen.

[tagz]

Check out Dante's Inferno in Seattle 2072 and The Black Shogun AR bar in Ghost Cartels.

As far as recieving AR, I always figured that AROs are broadcast openly so they are visible to any who view AR and don't block them (spam anyone?). However, I'm sure more private forms of AR would require an actual subscription to a node to have access to it.

Private AR club might look like a small number of people talking to the air in a park while someone subscribed to the right node might see a dance floor and a crowd of VR users or AR users at another location that is linked to that one.

[suoq]

One concept i have in mind is when a team is breaking into a place, the hacker can have his persona walk along side the team. This to aid in interaction (and at table playability), but would require that the persona can "know" about the area around the team.

If the team has a tacnet, as a hacker, I'd rather be in the tacnet running defense and co-ordinating than hopping from local access point to local access point drawing attention to the team. Also, by being in the tacnet, the persona knows about the area around the team. Since the tacnet is probably within mutual range of any targets needing hacking, it a decent launch point.

That being said, in 4e, I'd rather be there in person. I wouldn't want to be following the team via public nodes and AR. I don't like depending on something I know is insecure or in my enemy's hands and public nodes are both.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

That's what Reality Filter is for, right? Or VR-Scaping, or something like that. Whatever it's called. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Sculpting... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smokin.gif)