Move-By-Wire Flavour Text, I was just curious... Options

[Kyuhan]

In the flavour text it says move-by-wire is based on similar systems used for vehicle and aircraft maneuverability, does anybody know if there's really systems like this on planes and such?

[Penta]

Yep. Planes have had fly-by-wire systems for about 30 years now, on military and civil aircraft.

[Kyuhan]

Cool, thanks. :)

[Cray74]

Tests of fly-by-wire by NASA:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/history...astprojects/F8/

Now airliners have it:
http://www.airbus.com/media/fly_by.asp

[Guest_Crimsondude 2.0_*]

Yes, there are. However, they work entirely differently than MBW does and, for all intents and purposes, should not even use the same terminology IMO.

If MBW worked like FBW does, they wouldn't need to put your brain into a constant seizure that can never be stopped. I have no doubt that it's nothing more than some BS attempt at "game balance" or some such nonsense.

Oh, in SR there is also Drive-by-Wire for your vehicle.

[Gambitt]

Aye heres the european bad boy. Without fly by wire its just a dead stick.

http://www.eurofighter.starstreak.net/Euro...flight-sys.html

[Slacker]

I've also seen a real-life car with Drive-by-Wire. It was just a prototype, but that was 3 or 4 years ago if I remember correctly. Can't recal who made it though.

[Guest_Crimsondude 2.0_*]

This car?

Just quoting a post already made be myself a month ago.

[Req]

IRL: far as I know, fly-by-wire just means replacing the old-skool hydraulic actuators on your flight controls with electric motors, and parsing the commands to activate them through a computer of some sort. It's my belief that the Move-By-Wire writers read an article about the F-117A Nighthawk (the "Stealth fighter") and about how it's inherently unstable due to its amazingly screwed-up-lookin' airframe, and how it is made to fly by offloading a lot of the flight-control tasks to the fly-by-wire computer. The instability is not an artifact of fly-by-wire system, but the fly-by-wire system does serve to counteract the plane's instability.

There are plenty of aircraft using fly-by-wire systems (I believe the most modern versions of the F/A-18 do) that are nicely aerodynamic airframes, capable of being operated safely without the computer in the loop.

(as always: I might be on crack, here, but this is what I think I remember...)

[Guest_Crimsondude 2.0_*]

Indeed. It's only the rare case of the F-117 or X-37 where FBW becomes necessary. But as you said yourself, the FBW does not create the instability. It controls the inherent instability. And I can't see how it should be termed an X-by-Wires system if it doesn't operate like FBW does, which is to control the actual surfaces and route them all together and then hook it up to the control system. MBW is just stupid, and I don't see the point of using it the way it's written.

[Rev]

Going with the flavor text the idea would be to somehow modify a persons nervous system such that it could react quicker, but was less stable, then use other hardware to actively damp the instabilities. This would be analogous to the way fly by wire systems allow airplane designers to design planes that are instable, but still flyable because the computer can translate the pilots simple fairly linear commands into complex non-liniar changes to the various physical flight controls.

This is actually a fairly robust analogy for what is basically marketing.

[scoundrel]

For idiots like me, the flavor text for Move-By-Wire makes perfect sense. :)

[Guest_Crimsondude 2.0_*]

[Cynic project]

Now I could be wrong but I thought that the reason that the fly by wire and move by wire system really worked under the idea, that the fastest way something move is to always be moving. You take a body or plane and make it try to go 360 on it's X,Y, and Z axis. Then you stop it from moving in any way. So you have an object that wants to move everywhere, but is not. Then when you want movement you stop, stoping the obect.

It is a lot like a rubber band. You can pull it back and fire at something or have it held taught and aimed at something. What rubber band will it the target first? The one you have to pull back and then let go, or the one you just let go?

The human muslce's fastest form of movement is a spasm or sizure. So by making the body basiclly into a controled one you have a body that can move faster than than any other human.

What i don't get is why the movemnt is graceful. I would see more as being machine like, as a computer is telling yrou body just how to move, at every level.

[mfb]

yes. that's the part that makes sense. the part that doesn't make sense is why they need to put the brain in a state of permanent seizure to achieve this.

[hobgoblin]

your brain is still telling your body where to go. its only that now the info travels down a wire, rather then neurons for most of its time.

basicly the mbw system spends most of its time intercepting or counteracting the spasms so that it becomes nothing more then a a small shaking at worst. but when you decide to move in some direction the mbw is able to allow for spasms that are allready trying to move your body in that direction to actualy have an effect. ie, the movement command have allready been sendt, what your realy doing is allowing it to happen :P

and i dont think its on/off like, more like a gradual dampening of the signal so that you end up where your aiming.

the medical problem most likely comes from the machinegun like movement center you need for this to work. maybe it burns out?

[SpasticTeapot]

I personally think that MBW should be replaced with a synthetic cerebellum option. By replacing most of the bit of your brain that controls movement and other lower functions, reaction times could be improved a LOT. Of course, this would still need a wired reflexes style set of fiber optics to directly control the muscles, but links to things like the adrenal gland would not be needed, and because most of the links are to the metal bits already installed in your head, essence cost would'nt be that much higher than conventional systems..

[Rev]

[Guest_Crimsondude 2.0_*]

[Rev]

Don't remember exactly the wording on the drawbacks, but they had basically to do with the person going into full seizures & soforth, so if the brain was constantly on the edge of seizure or even having sort of micro seizures the mbw was squelching the side effects would be just as reasonable as they were before. The nervous system modifications aren't very stable and tend to drift toward seizures that the hardware cannot damp requiring surgical correction.

There must be many more or less plausible explinations, but MBW already has one of the better detailed explinations in shadowrun.

Personally I like that shadowtech went to all the extra work of figuring out explinations for a lot of this stuff. It makes good adventure hooks and roleplaying fodder.

[Guest_Crimsondude 2.0_*]

That is pretty much what the description says. It works fine within that context. The way it's described, TLE-x is a perfectly logical drawback of having that thing installed. The description makes sense in a twisted sort of way. Calling it Move-by-Wires and suggesting it's the same thing as Fly-by-Wires is disingenuous, but the same principles hold if you stretch the example (you have to stretch it until it nealry snaps, but still).

So, to answer the original question: Yes, there are such things.


My point, my digression really, was that there's a better way to do it. I don't like the mechanic. I think it's grossly unnecessary and about as logical as setting someone on fire to get them to run faster. A system calling itself MBW could work better, and could do the same things without requiring the user to be in constant seizure.

I could house rule it, but I don't like house rules. If I did, there wouldn't be a problem. MBW would work entirely different and would not instill the same drawbacks (namely, TLE-x). It would have the same problem Wired Reflexes do when activated, only it'd be harder to stop them. Likewise, MBW would be made with cyberlimbs in mind first and not require the insane essence costs in them. Nor would Wired, and it annoys me that you don't get the discount when you have 4 cyberlimbs and aren't wiring the peripheral nervous system but insteading simply connecting wires. But that's for another day.

However, since I don't like house rules and I don't plan on adding any unless I can't help it it's moot.

[Lindt]

Actually a number of cars have a drive-by-wire esk system in place. New Corvette for example, you tell the computer with to do, and it does it according to what it thinks is right, not nessecarrly what you tell it.

The fly by wire system is becomming a nessectity in fighter planes, mostly because the more naturally unstable the airframe, the more responsive it is, and the faster it can turn.

[hobgoblin]

crimsondude, isnt MBW wired reflexes+ ?

[Guest_Crimsondude 2.0_*]

Not to my knowledge. They work on entirely different principles.

Wired Reflexes are exactly that, composed of "neural boosters and andrenaline stimulators" (SR3, 301). MBW is a computer system that interacts directly with the brain and central nervous system, but does not include the pervasive replacement or augmentation of the peripheral nervous system in its description. In M&M and CT, it's described simply as an expert computer interfacing with the brain.

[hobgoblin]

heh figures.

still, flavor texts have a bad habbit of never being 100% correct. most of the time i boil it down to: cost: x essence, benefit: something or other. and then look for any incompatibilitys and side effects. how it works may well be small gnomes behind your ear as long as it fits the setting.