QUOTE (Earlydawn @ Apr 27 2008, 03:28 PM)
WMS, are there any good online resources to learn about principles of RADAR / LIDAR, jamming, etc? Google turns up relatively little.
I'm not sure you really want to learn about real world tech. Generally, the more knowledgeable you are, the more you see the flaws or outright mistakes the designers made. Certain compromises have to be made for games to be playable (see the arguments about RL encryption vs. SR encryption) and then there's the general public's understanding of tech, which isn't particularly accurate.
Most people have notions based on movies, eg. weapon caliber vs. actual damage/penetration (.45ACP is more effective than .22LR but less so than .30-06). The same goes for their know-how on wireless communication, encryption, computer capabilities, vehicle maneuverability, etc, etc. Disabusing them of those beliefs is harder than just going alng with them.
Then you get into the vagueness of the game definitions and stuff that the developers will never worry about. Is SR4 thermographic equivalent to foward looking infra-red (FLIR) or is it something else? Are the frequency bands used by today's radar even close to those used in the post-Crash/2.0 world? Nothing says that lingering Ghost Dance or Haley's Comet side effects doesn't cause static on a couple of frequency bands that are free and clear IRL.
