Sure.

In fact, you would just subscribe the drone and use Edit to transform the image from the drone to conform to your your PoV, then overlay it - making the barrier virtually transparent.

Hmm, well, that would work too. But wouldn't the information from the drone be more accurate if it gave it's own targetting reticule on the target? At least I would be able to skip the Edit test.

In a way it IS indirect fire but at the same time you get real time AR information that basically makes walls moot as long as you have something that can pinpoint a targets location for you behind the wall (be it a camera, drone or other sensor on that side of the wall.

It’s…direct indirect fire? You fire on something you cannot see with your normal vision but your AR information overlay gives you a perfect picture.

Well, that could be circumvented with a laser range finder on the drone and it's own smartlink. Crossreference the information from the two smartlinks and you would be able to have exact information about the targets actual location - especially if both the drone and character are accessed to the matrix and can use GPS to get their own exact locations.

It can be done, SR4 just dont give any hard rules about it. Hardware wise it can be done and I would be surprised if the computing power of SR4 would be unable to do it.

That doesn't really matter:
Edit can extrapolate a 3D-Version of the scene.
That can, depending on GM judgement, directly be used or incorporated into a MapSoft to achieve the desired overlay result.

In fact, you can perfectly see him - just like the wall just has gotten transparent.

Where does it state that I use Intuition when using blind fire? I would use the drone to create an AR enviroment where I can see my target and then shoot using my own gun that I'm holding. How would that normally require intuition?

In the combat section.

It wouldn't - if the data is real. If not, you simply miss the real target, but might shoot the virtual one...

err, may i ask what book your reading from?

sure the edit progam can be used to create a 3d shape from say a laser or higher resolution radar scan, but at best you would get a single color 3d model in the shape of whoever is behind said wall. and then you would need to have a scanner on both sides of him to make sure you get all the data...

i would present it more like the classical hollywood heat vision, but using single color shapes.

and that is hardly equivalent to be wall becoming transparent (if so then you would be able to read the text of the t-shirt the enemy is wearing, watch the news on the tv behind him and so on).

btw, i dont think the drone would need a smartlink of its own. what it would need is a gps location of its own and a range finder (should be part of most drone sensory kits). that, and your comlink knowing your location would be able to posision a shape of some kind by using triangulation.

then you would use your smartlink equiped weapon to aim at said shape.

May I ask you what book you didn't read?

Edit can fake any surveillance sensor footage on the fly - so it can create fitting sceneries on the fly, based on minimal input... and the abilites of the user.
The input generated by drone sensors would be sufficient in 2070, as would the one by cameras or cybereyes.

How boring and unintuitive.

That depends what data you actually have and what has to be 'guessed'. The more input, the merrier, sure.

How so? The AR modifiers are already supposed to represent real-time feeds.

Personally I don't like the idea of applying the AR as a bonus. I already consider the Smartlink bonus to be a +2 AR bonus, and would allow characters with particularly good target data to incorperate it for the full +3.

The reason I don't like considering the situation to be Blind Fire with penalty offset by AR bonus is that you're not blind, you're just shooting at an AR target rather than a real one. If they're exactly the same then no visibility penalties shoudl be applied.

There is a bullseye which is present in RL, and visible through AR in exactly the same position. Realistically, I shouldn't be at any more of a penalty when shooting the AR version of the target than the RL version of the target, so it shouldn't matter if an opaque barrier blocks my view.

What does matter is how good the copy of your target is, however. I would thus remove the blind-fire penalty, but add other penalties based on the quality of the image provided. If the spotter's visibility of the target is impared then that penalty is applied, otherwise I'd apply a penalty based on a Computer+Edit test to create the image.

Perhaps start at blind-fire (-6) and reduce the penalty by 1 for each hit on the Computer+Edit test, to a minimum of the visibility penalties suffered by the spotter?

IE: Say a thermographic camera has picked-up a runner team sneaking through an underground corp facility in total darkness (the runners already disabled the lights). The security hacker grabs the feed and alters the angle, providing it as an AR feed for the security guards in the next room. The hacker gets 5 hits on his edit test, which would reduce the penalty from -6 to -1, except that the minimum penalty is -2 for the thermographic mode in total darkness. Now the security guards can open-fire through the intervening wall, with a -2 penalty from the IR AR feed, and the runners had better hope that the corp invested in something better than plasterboard for their internal walls.

Whoa - that's outdated since Virtual Realities 2.0.

some tricks never go out of style...

Why bother with that when you could just instead edit out the person who is under the camera? That way they are getting a "real" feed, just the person who is also there is editted out.

Err, sorry, thats from rigger 3. While there are no mentions of what is included in SR4 sensors it would make sense that the old info is still valid.

Nope - you just can spoof one combat turn on the fly without hacking the camera.
If you hack it, you can do pretty much what you want.

Lag? Very unlikely given how fast computers are in SR.

Sensor network imperfect? Isn't that represented by the visibility modifiers of the drone? If the drone was to have a -4 to shoot the target then the best image you can give the shooter has a -4. I suppose one idea might be to apply the visibility modifiers to the edit test too though.

You may not have it superimposed properly? Absolutely true, that's why you need the editor to do a good job in transforming the feed. If they glitch then you're almost certainly shooting off-target.

Bullets reacting unpredictably to barriers? I don't see why they should apply to opaque barriers when they don't apply to transparent ones. If you want there to be a penalty for firing through barriers then make one rather than claiming it as an arbitrary part of a number which was initially a visibility penalty. If you want to add a penlty for shooting through barriers after that then that's fine, but that should also apply to attacks through transparent barriers and shouldn't be part of the blind-fire modifier.

I personally see no problem in letting stupidly good hackers set-up a shot through a wall at no penalty to hit. They're stupidly good, after all. No normal hacker's going to be able to do it regularly, not without edge, and if you want to make it a bit harder then you could always increase the base time required to provide the image.

I also believe that it should be possible to completely remove the visibility penalty to shoot at something you otherwise couldn't see normally by shooting at an AR version of it. It is possible, after-all, for the image to be superimposed exactly if the person doing it is good enough. Note that 'good enough' means, in this case, 'better than almost any starting runner'. It's barely possible with a computer expert adept, but really, who makes a character with Aptitude (Computer), Computer 7, Improved Ability (Computer) 3, and a specialisation in editing?

Do remember that the targets still get the benefits of the armor rating of the barrier too.

Another reason that I don't like the -6+3 method is that it doesn't take other factors into account. How well can the spotter see the target? How good is the person doing the editing and how good is their software? It's a quick'n'easy way to do it, but I don't think it represents the task at hand.

and at that point i would say that you dont need edit to screw around. just have it go into freeze frame mode or whatever (maybe get it to crash and supply some kind of error message).

Come on - where's the style in that? It too obvious, too.

style over substance gets you killed.

and if done right, they will be calling for tech support, not extra guards

Both, actually - as there is nothing right.
Freezing/looping it will trigger an alarm in even the most basic systems, and crashing it does so certainly.

If you just need to get away, that's an option, but not if you want to be unnoticed.
And, not being noticed is the healthiest way of running the shadows.

are you sure about this from a real life standpoint?

or are you just having it that way in your game?

This is more of shooting through cover and not around it – if your target is behind a wall for example.

Think of it like you are aiming at a one-way mirror. You do not see what is on the other side. Your smartlink (on the gun) gives information about range and an approximate point of impact for the bullet.

The drone is inside the room with the target and looks at him from cover (lets assume slightly behind him at an elevated position. You have subscribed your gun to the drones smartlink AND your own.

The drone will be able to show where you would hit with your gun from ITS point of view and at the same time you get your own targeting data from YOUR point of view, giving you two possible hit locations – one to hit the wall and one if the bullet goes through the wall.

You give the drone a command to send it’s visual information data as a mirrored image overlay upon your own point of view, effectively making the mirror a two way mirror as the image of the target is painted within your AR vision.

Thus it’s blindfire (you cannot see your target) but you have a virtual image of the targets location, movement and a view of the room behind the mirror (AR bonus).