I understand that technomancers are living commlinks, but I am running a game and I have had this question come up.

Does the technomancer see AR without the need of glasses with a image link?

I haven't done much with TM's so I am still familiarizing myself with the specific rules. A player in my group just lost his mage character and begged to play a TM, during character creation this came up. A specific reference to the rules would be helpful.

Effectively, yes, they see the AR without any sort of image link glasses.

I can't find anything at the moment to support this, other than some of the book fiction, but I'll hope you'll take my word for it.

It effectively works that they remain attached to the Matrix through their brains, so their brains notice the various AR stuff in the same way that anyone with a Direct Neural Interface (DNI) picks it up. Glasses use the eyes to show the information and the eyes take the information to the brain. With Technomancers and DNI users, they avoid the eyes altogether and the information beams straight into the brain, allowing them to understand it.

I say effectively because even though they don't "see" it as per the full understanding of the word see, they still sense it and understand it. So for all intents and purposes, the answer is yes.

Okay I can agree with you that they understand AR on a psuedo-DNI level. Now for am extension to the question. One of the other characters is a drone rigger and was the teams hacker-if-needed. He runs the tacnet and loves to keep map overlays updated on the fly for everyone. How would this work with the TM? would he be able to see it. How would a tacnet work with him? He can't exactly run the program himself.

think of the TM as a person using a simsense module on permanent hotsim...

as for tacnets, see the "adopting software" sidebar on page 136 of unwired...

basically, TM's can mimic software as complex forms...