To answer this question would require pinning down exactly how Invisibility works, which is damnably hard. Suffice it to say that there are strong arguments against "it makes things transparent", which is what it would have to be to have the seats, dice, and Rigger matter.

The classical version of this dilemma is "I cast Invisibility on the door. Do I see the room beyond?"

~J

At least this one is addressed in here

http://www.srrpg.com/resources/faq.shtml#4

Edit: And it seems to kinda answer my question, since the OR is actually being used.

I´ll prolly stick with my 100Kg ruling, even though i´m not sure that invisibility should be related with the object´s weight, at least i´m sure that it shouldn´t be related with the object´s resistance. Why should a diamond ring be harder to be made invisible than , say, jelly ?

This is so unbelievably funny.


So... How much essence does a minivan get? Do armor plating and weapon installations reduce it? Do aftermark add-ons remain visible unless paid for in essence?



Heheh. In all honesty, I would say that the van becomes invisible, and the occupants do not unless also made invisible with seperate spells that must also be sustained.

That said, i would like to add that the invisible van issue happened in a Bug City game. But we´re playing by SR3 rules, so we only have to worry if the van is someone else´s ally spirit. And, of course, if it just happens to be dikoted, then what would be it´s OR ?

Through the magic of BDSM and bisexual polygamy.

Seriously, the husband-wife team that created Wonder Woman modeled her after their live-in lover, with whom they had a revolving BDSM relationship. This goes far to explain why wonder woman became powerless when her bracelets were chained together.

By the same token, why is something that's heavy more difficult than something that's lightweight? The size of a subject would be better, though I think that's what you're getting at.

Also, isn't OR based on how manufactured or processed something is, not its density? So a toxic jelly compound may be very difficult to use magic on, while a diamond is fairly natural. You might be confusing OR with BR.

er...

why don´t we all pretend that i knew what i was talking about ?

Kilograms are not a scale of weight (a force, measured in Newtons) but a scale of mass (amount of stuff). So if you are trying to affect a 45kg dwarf on the surface of the earth (normal weight), at the bottom of a mine shaft (less weight) or at the top of a mountain (less weight) the TN will remain the same because the dwarf is still made of the same amount of stuff and you're trying to affect it all (such as with levitate for example). Object resistance, say using the Ram/Wreck spells, describes how unnatural an object is and thus how hard it is to affect it with magic. It's easier to cast Levitate on a microchip than a sperm whale because you're affecting less stuff. It's easier to cast Animate on the corpse of a sperm whale than a microchip because it's a more natural object.

But as Fortune says, Improved Invisibility doesn't affect the substance at all - it only affects living eyes' and visual-based technological sensors' ability to detect the object. It just makes a 'blind-spot' which the brain will do its best to fill in and computer algorithms will try to interpolate. If you've ever played around with those cards that have an X and a O on them you'll know what happens when the X enters your visual blind-spot. You don't notice it any more and you 'see' whatever your brain thinks should be there. If the X and O are on white card, you see blank white space where the X was. If it was a green and red checkered card, you see green and red checks where the X used to be. If you cast Imp Invis on a microchip on a table, you see an empty table. If you cast Imp Invis on a sperm whale in the ocean, you see the ocean, with a rather vague area. If there is seaweed floating all over the ocean, there is seaweed floating in that section too. If you cast Imp Invis on a door you don't see the door any more and your brain fills in the blank area with the surroundings... ie you see a continuous wall meeting the carpet. If you cast Imp Invis on a van in the street, someone looking at that part of the street will see generic kerb and generic shopfront. If a man walks behind your invisible van, they will see the man, because they expect to. If he drops the newspaper he is carrying though, they won't see that until they actually see him emerge from the other side of the van sans newspaper, do a double-take, and swear they need more sleep. If similar things keep happening in that bit of space over an extended time (say the time it takes the observer to finish his cup of soycafe while staring across the road) he may realise something odd is going on and go and investigate.

Remember that Imp Invis doesn't defeat radar, ultrasound or pressure pads that could detect invisible cars, trolls, etc. I am not sure how stealth paint and radar jammers make planes and things invisible but I guess it is a similar principle: the waves simply aren't returned to the sensor, as if they're travelling off into space, and so the sensor interprets that 'no reading' to mean 'nothing there'.

Imp Invis is more like the Somebody Else's Problem field than transparency: it's just a means to trick observers into not noticing anything unusual is there. And that, as Slartibartfast would tell you, is a great deal easier than making something actually transparent.

I believe it is this that John was objecting to, which I would too.

My view is the opposite of what the FAQ says. Instead of "I make this wall invisible so that now I can cast LoS spells at targets on the other side of it" my ruling is "I make this door 'invisible', so now I don't notice there is a door there at all, and see just a long, opaque wall."

Fygg Nuuton and John talks about things connected with the van being included in its invisibility area, just as my SEP field interpretation would. But that objects observed entering the area remain visible, just as they would in my SEP interpretation. And he says the spell must overcome the rating of sensors viewing the area - irrespective of the OR or mass of the object being hidden, just as I do.

In fact SR3 p195 explicitly says "Invisibility affects the minds of viewers. Improved invisibility affects technological sensors as well." It has no effect whatsoever on the object, only on optic devices collecting light from the area around the object. Just as Fortune and I have said.

What in canon disproves my view? That's not a challenge - I just don't see it (sic), and I'm always on the lookout to improve the way I run things.

Did you really have to ruin our illusions, hyz?

Although I'll never see Wonder Woman without seeing the Family Guy bit about it.

Superman flies up next to WW in the air.

"So, hey Wonder Woman, flying your invisible jet, eh?"

"Uh, yeah."

"So, how's it goin'?"

"Listen, I'm actually in the invisible bathroom."

"So you mean right now you're....?"

"Yeah."

I like that description of invisibility alot, thanks

Except for improved invisibility which is a physical illusion.

So what if Phil routes the picture into his imagelink? Does he get shown a picture of Bob? What if he does this sixty times per second?

~J

Yep, but he can't target spells through it nor would I allow smartlink bonuses through such a setup. Also, since the camera does not get to resist Improved Invisibility he would not get to resist it. In other words, he could not possible see any person with Force 4 invisibility and 1 success using this setup.

In my experience, people generally cast it because they aren't on the highway.

In my experience, people also frequently have a rigger driving.

Hyzmarca: it needs to process light into ion movement, at minimum. There's no getting around the fact that at some stage in the process it needs a dump of the sensors, whether that dump is sampled on-demand or at a specified refresh rate. As for the imagelink issue, nothing says the imagelink can only accept date from one source, but even if we assume it can't take a second source there's always the limited imagelink that a Smartlink normally comes with (you don't need to use the already-installed full imagelink).

~J

True, but it does not need to do anything more than what the human eye naturally does. Light hits a photoreceptor and is transformed into ions and transmitted to the brain. The eye is not acting on the data in any way and the data is not directly computer readable. It is really little different from having a natrual or bioware eye. With an imagelink, like electronic magnification, the eye converts the data into a machine readable format first, edits it, and then converts it into a brain readable format. Because of this, the character is not looking at the person but is looking at an image of the person captured by the eye camera.

The setup:

Chicago, August 22, 2055. late at night.

The whole group is sitting tight in the rigger´s van, going north in the Chicago Skwy. To add some chaos to the scene, i´ve decided to add blockades all along the 94, leading to a massive gridlock in the lower city and a completely deserted highway. They decided to ram some of the blockades and try their luck in the highway. The sky, on the other hand, is patrolled with some drones and helicopters from the national guard, who just arrived from a nearby headquarters. (Oh, and some bugs too, but who cares ? )

So, in an effort to avoid detection while speeding thru the empty highway, they used a combo of chaotic world and Imp Invisibility, and here we are.


And no, they haven´t managed to escape. Even though it´s easier to do it before the wall goes up, they would have to break a blood oath they did to Don O´Toole himself.

I understand why they wrote that, but I have never liked it. I reckon cybereyes 'should' not get to roll resistance tests, like other technological sensors, whereas bioeyes and those eyes 'my mother gave me' should.

For the deepest layer of cells, the photoreceptors furthest from the pupil, that is correct, no processing - but those are not the cells that communicate with the brain. All the interneurons and ganglion cells in the retina that lie in about 12 strata ontop of those photoreceptors do a vast amount of integration and comparison and other calculation before sending parallel heavily processed data down the optic tract.

For example this page says:

This page has diagrams and a simple step-by-step guide to the way different cells in the eye respond when light falls on part of the retina. Suffice to say it's not a simple case of sending two unadulterated snapshots of the outside world to the visual cortex and getting the brain to do all the processing from there.

As i said, they were trying this in August 22. Formally speaking, there´s no CZ yet.

Actually, no. Absolutely nothing interesting well happen except maybe for some very low tech mo-peds running into you.

Reread the manual. Rating 0 sensors include rangefinders, as well as ultrasound and laser proximity detectors (none of which are affected by invis). Rating 1 sensors include all the above plus basic radar (which is not affected by invis).

(This is on page 135, if you're looking for it.)

As for the invisibility question... Maybe SR3R should just drop improved invisibility and be done with this mess.