Yes, there are other types of sensors that would be defeated by various other perceptual cues and or specialized spells... Sound would register on Passive Sonar, but Active sonar sends out a pulse that relys upon signal bounce, and a radiated sound does not provide a bounce (it is not really there), only a physical object does that... so I would hear noise on my passives, but in any active scan the sourece would truly disappear and not register...

You could indeed create various spells to defeat all of the various sensors that are out there, but you would probably not be able to have everyone of them active at any given time... lot of things to cover there... the basic sapells work for almost all main cases... there are a few types that tend to be difficult to handle, and some you would not probably even think about... for example... radiated heat (Body Heat) can be covered by improved invisibility for the Thermographic spectrum of visual perception, but would fail against a heat sensor itself (or the sensing organs fo a Rattlesnake), as it is not a visual sensor, it is a thermometric sensor... Hell, the Heat Sensor on a Man-Portable Ground to Air Missile Launcher can detect the heat signature of an individual person at over 2 miles and track it (This I know as I played with it for weeks when I was in Central America with the Marine Corps in the late 80's)... not a visual cue there, it is the radiated heat from the body itself...

Can't cover everything...

Keep the Faith

Eep.

It does place a whole new light on thigs doesn't it...

Keep the Faith

Yes, but physical illusions can/do mimic physical effects, which could/should include ultrasound.


Really? I see a single multi-sense invisiblity covering visual, sonar, radar, acoustic, and scent. I see a second spell like levetate covering pressure sensors, and then masking to cover your auras. So 2 sustaining foci and 1 or maybe 2 metamagics. Takes effort but not impossible.



using the same particles emitted by the same source at the same frequencies. So i'm going to have to call B.S. on this just out of pure logic.


Think I just did.

Not really, no... Because Radar and various other "senses" are not really "senses" per se... they are not intrinsiocally covered by teh Multi-sense category... If you actually read the spells you are referencing, they require definition of the senses covered...

You must have actually SEEN the effect that you wish to mimic... when is the last time that you ever SAW exactly how a radar cross-section is generated... if you can do that with your eyes, then you let me know, because I can't... Understanding of the relevant effect is not enough, you must have actually experienced it in some way... which is why you must design a completely new spell to cover it... Trid Phantasm will not work for that... nor will Trid Entertainment ("Just about anything you can imagine" is not everything, and I would make you design a new spell)...

An example of this is the Chaff Spell (Restrictred to Non-Living Sensors), however, it does not actually impact Perception, it impacts Sensor Rating... however, it does nothing to reduce the actual physical equipment of the Drone other than the sensor rating, so Radar may still work... gray area)... in this case you would roll just clearsight and radar rating (no Sensor added as it is likely reduced to ineffectiveness)...

Your mileage may of course vary...

Keep the Faith

Uhm, ok...
I've always thought that most illusion spells, like trid phantasm and stuff, never really created an illusion that you could see/touch/smell/hear/taste, but "imprinted" these sensations direct into your brain. Which means that artificial sensors would not be fooled by them because they have no brain to be fooled.
Now, invisibility and improved invisibility on the other hand, always seemed to me as you bending the light you reflected to infinite which would thus, make you invisible because you are not reflecting light, thus, anyone with visual sensors (eyes, camers, whatever) would be fooled by invisibility.
Just my 2

Mana spells affect living minds only. Physical spells actually create (or remove) physical things that can be experienced by the senses.

Phantasm is a mana spell, Trid Phantasm is a Physical spell. Ditto for Invisibility and Improved Invisibility.

Absolutely right.

Let's make an example: Say Steve the Wizard has had a nervous breakdown, and is in a nice friendly place with soft walls. He is talking to his imaginary friend, Steven the Accountant. Now, let's say the therapist gets a picture of Steve and Steven playing checkers. Steven's not really there, but Steve is a wizard - what if he cast Phantasm without realising it? In that case, the staff and the other patients could all see and hear Steven the Accountant, but he wouldn't show up on the picture, because everybody is just sharing Steve the Wizard's delusion. If Steve had cast Trid Phantasm instead, Steven the Accountant would show up in the picture, and the therapist is going to have to find some other way to make her point.

Interesting Example... I like it...

Keep the Faith

Let's take this a step further, but first let's review the description of the Invisibility spell:


I've bolded the two sentences I want to focus on. The first sentence does not pass muster on internal logic. Thermographic is not part of the "normal" visual spectrum for real-world humans. Neither is low-light. In Shadowrun some metatypes have natural thermographic or low-light vision. This isn't any different from other creatures in nature having their visual sense attuned to slightly different ranges of the EM spectrum than humans do. So what's a "normal visual sense?"

Add in my second bolded sentence and I make my case for why radar would be affected by Improved Invisibility. Radar is just a means of detecting EM radiation in the microwave region of the spectrum (wavelengths in the ~mm range) just as thermographic sensors detect EM radiation in the 14 micron range and visual spectrum sensors read in the 450-750 nanometer range. If the last sentence is taken literally then there is *no difference* between the way the photons interact with matter in any of these cases. In all cases, the detectors (whether it be rods and cones in an eye or a radar sensor) see things because they are being hit by photons that were either emitted or reflected by objects in the field of view. Biological or technological sensors are taking those photon impacts and converting them to a signal(voltage in the case of cybereyes or other tech sensors) which is then converted into something the user can interpret. If the spell is warping light around the subject to prevent EM radiation, i.e. photons, from reaching a detector, then it makes no difference what the wavelength of that radiation is.

If the wavelength does matter then you are implying that an unintelligent spell has a look-up table of wavelength ranges that it either warps or allows to pass through unchanged, all depending on whether some device or living being has that wavelength range as part of it's "visual" spectrum. I guess you could hand-wave that all away and say, "Its' Magic!, it doesn't have to make sense." That would be the YMMV part.

Semerkhet's explanation is closer to my view on the matter. Energy that is radiated in a non-photonic manner would still be visible... but short of being in contact with an influenced medium (measuring an air temperature rise, or sampling a chemical smell from the air), remote sensors such an thermographics are still based on waveforms for the most part. The line starts getting hazy when we start talking about physical vibrations, such as sound, and where radar and ultrasound fall in relation to the various mediums.

This spell makes the subject more difficult to detect by normal visual senses (including low-light, thermographic, and other senses that rely on the visual spectrum).

I think they're using the parenthetical to redefine 'Normal' for Shadowrun - since a good portion of the Shadowrunning community was born with thermographic vision, it is considered part of the 'Normal' visual range for purposes of this spell. Ditto low-light, and anything else that relies on the visual spectrum of light like Enhanced Vision mods on cybereyes. It may parse easier if you consider it to read: by normal visual senses AND low-light AND thermographic AND other senses that rely on the visual spectrum.

Improved invisibility creates an actual warping of light around the subject that affects technological sensors as well.

This line isn't about the science, it's about whether the spell is a Jedi Mind-Trick or a visual effect that will effect mindless observers. Normal Invisibility doesn't fool cameras because they're too dumb to be fooled. Improved Invisibility is changing the physical appearance of the area, so it works on cameras and drones as well as weak-minded fools.



I would humbly suggest that it may be more reasonable to assume the spell has *some* limit to its effective wavelength. Explaining it as 'visual' is a pretty clear set of ranges most of the time. Also, if you decide that Improved Invisibilty warps all frequencies of the EM spectrum equally, I assume you don't use Commlinks, TacNets, Drones, or any other tech while cloaked?

Me, I'd just accept 'visual ranges' and get on with my life.

The nice part of the problem is, we don't need to define a coherent physics model to find it's impact on the game.

Visual Senses: Low-Light, Thermographic, Normal Human Eyesight
Audio Senses: Radar, Ultrasound, Normal Audible Frequencies
Olfactory Senses: Anything chemical within a specific radius
Taste Senses: Direct contact olfactory
Touch Senses: Direct Heat, Impact, Pressure, Large Amplitude Vibrations

Radio, Xray, Gamma... don't matter.

How many of these classifications really count?

Invisibility: Mental illusion. Visual Sense.
Improved Invisibility: Visual Sense Only. OR rating on Sensors and Drones (if installed)
Silence: Audio Senses Only. OR rating on Sensors and Drones (if installed)
Stealth: Mental Illusion. Audio Sense.
Camo: Visual Sense Only
Chameleon: Visual Sense Only
Phantasm: Mental illusion. Multi-Sense.
Trid Phantasm: All senses
Concealment Spirit Power: All senses
Infiltration: # of hits is the perception threshold

So we only have sensors for Visual and Audio, and we only have spells and abilities to obscure Visual, Audio, or everything.

I would think
invisibility imposes a -6 penalty to visual perception, which supersedes camouflage, lighting, and concealment. Visual perception aids are still useful for seeing the character's footprints, etc. Improved invisibility should work on radar and thermographic vision, but not ultrasound.

It gets really tricky when someone designs a multi-sense "I'm not here" spell.

For you maybe, I NEED a coherent physics model for my games to actually work and make sense.

How do you get radar to be audio? It stands for Radio Detection And Ranging, which uses radio waves, not sound waves. It is ever bit as much of the EM spectrum as visible light.

Um...Orichalcum? Dragons flying under their own power? Man-sized insects with exoskeletons? Astral Projection? Ghosts? Essence? I would *love* to see your physics model for Shadowrun.

I understand that almost everything can be broken down into various forms of EM radiation. I thought it might be useful to attempt to create a meaningful game mechanism instead of arguing over semantics. So yes, you're right. Radar is a Visual Sense. This doesn't change the point I was trying to make, which is that everything can be broken down into visual and audio modifiers on the perception roll. You can get bonus dice on visual and audio, you can get penalty dice on visual and audio, you have a base chance of perception based on the raw stat and skill, and you have magical abilities that are blanket negative modifiers regardless of sense. However you choose to classify it, this is the underlying mechanism of the game mechanic, as I understand it.

1) atoms of said alloy held in an odd configuration by a quantum entanglement of their electrons with the metal's astral shadow
2) energies channeled from the astral assist with the extra needed lift.
3) last I checked those are spirits, which are the result of unnatural energies interacting with normal matter, and causing said matter to take their shape.
4) If a mind body duality is accepted, then the mind component can leave the body and travel through the dimension it resides on.
5) See 4
6) I mostly ignore it as its an admittedly stupid game balancing mechanic with no reasonable basis.

Then you generally understand wrong. Matter as we know it can be converted to EM radiation, but is NOT EM radiation itself.



except chem-sniffers

Edit: (Removed)

Er...did you forget to put in a ":)" earlier, or are you really as angry about the science in your magic cyborg dwarf game being inconsistent as you sound like you are?

Also, you can prove (and have, calm down) that radar and radio are EM, and thus are not covered by audio. However, I'm not actually convinced that the Invisibility spell is covering the entire EM spectrum based on the description 'Normal Visual Spectrum' being a little vague. If anything, I should think it limits the effect of the spell on parts of the EM spectrum that are not normally visual.

Oh, and on the subject of science, didn't I read somewhere that 'true' invisibility would result in blindness due to the lack of light hitting the invisible subject's eye? I recall having to scrap my plans for the girls locker room over it. At any rate, the 'harder' you play it, the tougher invisibility gets on the user.

I can see how you would think I'm being contrary for the sake of being contrary, but I'm not. I do happen to know a lot about the EM spectrum because that's the primary focus of my professional research, so I need a slightly higher standard of internal consistency to feed my suspension of disbelief. YMMV, obviously, but my reasoning is as folllows:

Shadowrun inserts magic into a technologically advanced world. The rules and fluff attempt to reconcile magic and technology to the point where we can use the rules to model how they interact, i.e. Object Thresholds, Elemental electrical effects, and warping light in the Improved Invisibility spell description. To my reckoning, that opens them up to some requirements of logical consistency while acknowledging that magic breaks the laws of physics as we know them now. My impression has always been that spells are not intelligent and are actually more like computer programs that do exactly what you design them to do. Which brings us back to Improved Invisibility. If you were designing a spell that could conceal you from EM radiation detectors, why would you limit yourself to some arbitrary range of the spectrum when you know that the detectors work from the nanometer range(visible light) all the way to the millimeter range (radar). I can't see any rules justification for limitations based on energy considerations, what with lightning bolts being tossed around.

So the reason I would rule this way as a GM is that it is simpler to say that the spell blocks all EM radiation and it also meets with my personal standard for consistency.

Someone mentioned blocking radio waves. Well, you're right. By that same logic you can't see out of the spell. You need photons to hit your retina, or cybereyes, in order to see. That's not happening if light is being warped around the subject of the spell. Obviously there is some magical way to be able to make the light blocking one way. If that's the case, then the person under the effect of the spell can see and can receive radio signals, but not send them. I think that communications limitation is a nice counterbalance to any perceived change in power due to the spell concealing from radar.

Present science indicates that the brain would be much happier with a cybernetic replacement to a lost limb. So losing essence for switching to cyber makes no sense. I have seen many, many times items costed on their utility, as opposed to their actual physiological impact. Titanium bone lacing for example, would be undetectable by the body but has a huge impact on your essence pool. The essence stat makes it impossible to clone organs or for evolution to occur. Its a terrible idea, and I ignore it as much as possible except when dealing with magic loss.


I'm not so much arguing 'does' as 'should'. The way the spell is described as working is by manipulating the path of photons. Redirecting some and intercepting others. Now if this is how it works then radar 'should' be affected. As a mage living in a modern world with threats such as radar I can see no reason why during my initial studies of magic I would ever research a physical invisibility spell which specifically does not deal with this set of wavelengths but will deal with all others. There is no reason someone would create a spell with this glaring flaw in the modern era. All the invisibility spells from previous times would be purely mental manipulations as they had no need to fool radar in the 4th age, and as such the increased drain came with no increased benefit. So I strongly feel a spell which would not have existed before the 6th age would be designed to counter the threats of that age. As such improved invisibility 'should' defeat radar as easily as the color green.



Unless the spell which is a physical illusion makes copies of the photons its deflecting around you, possibly even out of the thermal energy your own body and gear are emitting, as physical illusions DO have that power.

You do bring up a good point, but one I have already considered.

You posted this while I was writing my last post.

I agree on the wording of the spell description, but I see it as a limitation built into the spell and not a hard limitation on what the magic can do. A compromise could be to have a separate spell that covers the whole EM spectrum and modify the drain for "multi-sense."

Agree with the last paragraph but, as I noted, I'm willing to handwave away the two-way nature of the EM radiation blocking so that the subject can still see. What do you think of the corollary of only being able to receive radio(wireless) signals?

It might be fun to have a few strange sensory effects from being under the effect of Improved Invisibility - I hate to pass up a chance to mess with my players. Would it make sense for the light they see to be red-shifted, or distorted, or even affected by the magic in some wierder way? I seem to recall a video game where you heard strange whispers when you were using your invisibility spell - if the light is being provided through magic, could you see astral echos, or maybe just get a sense of them on the edge of your perception? Could the background count of the area come through?

Lots to think about. After all, I haven't earned my sigline in a month, at least.

I think we're both too quick to reply. Radio isolation is an interesting mechanic, certainly - it also means that Imp.Invis will defeat Radio Signal Scanners as well as Radar units. The implications of a wide-spectrum Improved Invisibility are kind of intriguing.

Me, I'm counting on Ultrasound sensors as a Invisibility counter - they're ubiquitous in nuyen-a-dozen motion sensors, and they can be fitted into a visual mode for prime runners and top-end drones. The odd thing is the Ultrawideband Radar Sensor, of which I am a *huge* fan, says that it can provide visuals like an Ultrasound sensor - what's your take on how *that's* supposed to work?

Excepth that in NO WAY is RADAR a VISUAL sense... Nor Audio as has been stated... it is to far outside of teh traditional meaning of "Visual"... just as Radio, Xray, Gamma Rays, Beta Radiation, and various other frequencies of the EM Spectrum...

Keep the Faith

Thermographic is considered visual, and, like radar, it uses invisible electromagnetic radiation. It becomes visual when you can see it.

Yep..... which are all photons..... all very well known and understood by much of the 6th world, including any mage who would bother creating an improved invisibility spell. Which means said spell should have been designed with them in mind, and as such defeat them.

The assumptions you're making are that it is:

1: Exactly the same effort to bend the entire EM spectrum as it is to bend the visual portion of the EM spectrum.
2: Exactly as likely that a mage will encounter a visual camera system as a radar system sensitive enough to pick up his signature.
3: Exactly as easy to make a spell without limitations as with limitations.

My position is that none of those are reasonable; blocking all EM radiation is an impressive achievement, and in more then 95% of security systems a spell that blocks the visual spectrum backed by a silence spell will be more then sufficient. I conclude that unless there is a very good reason why it is worth developing a spell of significant power, it is unrealistic to assume it is over engineered in that way.

You can keep talking about photons being photons, but you haven't addressed the means by which those photons are being bent around the caster. An ordinary mirror doesn't block radio waves, does it? A Faraday cage doesn't block visible light from shining through it. It is possible that the spell is wide-spectrum, but it's not ever explicitly stated that it is. Unless you can support the argument that the spell is inherently wide-spectrum beyond it being in your best interest for it to work that way, I don't feel that you have made a case for it affecting more then the visual spectrum.

That is not quite correct, Marwynn. I refer you to the last sentance of the Concealment power on pg 293 of the A edition of the core rules.


This would mean that Astral Sight does not allow someone to see through the Concealment power. I had already ruled the same since the original rules didn't specify (I think something in SM brought it up, but I forget what. I was in a hurry and just said "it works"). Still it was nice to be vindicated in the newest version of the core book when one of my players tried to dispute my original ruling in a game recently.

Man that's horridly worded, I'm sorry.

Yes, I'm aware of that. I actually made that point several times. "Astral sight sees right through these things" is meant for the spells themselves that are being discussed in my post, namely Invisibility and Trid Phantasm.

But also note that I'm talking about spell auras in astral. So Astral sight would see right through Imp. Invisibility. "Concealment from the spirit power" is just awkward but it's about the spell auras. As you pointed out it hides the auras of others in astral, but what about the spells you have up? They don't count as being part of your aura unless they've been made permanent, even quickened spells are separate if connected to the person's aura.

So you'll have a difficult time seeing the metahuman auras but the spells sustained should still be rather visible.

That's my take on it at least. I may be rationalizing it to balance out Concealment so you can't run Trid Phantasm and have a Spirit Conceal you and be mostly undetectable.

Radar is longer wave lengths, so its a lower energy particle and thus easier to manipulate. Also destructive interference would work no matter the wave length.


Ever walked through an automatic door? Or been given a photo radar ticket?


Oh you mean single sense vrs multi sense? I figure the whole EM spectrum should count as sight, just as the whole audio spectrum should count as hearing. Not sure how many meta humans hear ultra sonics, but a silence spell blocks ultrasound.


Except nearly every drone has should have some form or radar if only to give it depth perception, and every automatic door is likely going to have it as well, its not over engineered, its simply what would be needed.


Unless it is wide spectrum you would be seen by every door and drone which needs depth perception, as getting it from radar is faster and cheaper then getting it from stereo cameras.
As far as how the photons are bent, I'm assuming 'magic' as the only way I know to do it would be a gravitational field that would collapse the city your standing in.

The spells would be visible, if you could deal with the penalties of concealment.

So basically, if you want to stop your improved invisibilty mage... put in an automatic door. If radio doesn't see him... he can't open it. If it does... then security should be able to notice him as well, since I'm sure the doors are set up to record the radar blip of each person setting them off, and there's an agent matching those blips to camera images.

There are advantages and disadvantages to using each portion of the EM spectrum for certain applications. The wavelength of radar has to be calibrated to see what you want it to see. Aircraft radar works at a different wavelength than weather radar because the target size is different. You don't want to pick up rain drops on your aircraft radar, and vice-versa. We've arbitrarily named a portion of the EM spectrum as radar. If you tune the wavelength correctly, you're going to pick up objects in the .2-2.0 meter range. Without knowing the details, this is my guess for how a "people-size-things" radar works.



To your 1) above: The kinds of energies we're talking about being emitted and reflected by metahuman-sized targets on Earth is pretty small. It has to be or else we'd be burning everything we touch. If exclude the wavelengths shorter (and therefore higher energy, i.e. UV) than visual, the energy needed to "do something magical" with that light would pale in comparison to the energy needed to throw fireballs or lightning bolts. This is why I don't think that a broad spectrum EM blocking/redirecting Physical Illusion is out of the power range for SR magic.

As for your other points, whether a given size or type of matter blocks EM radiation depends entirely on the ratio between the size of the blocking object and the wavelength of the light intersecting it. So you're right, an object that blocks "normal visual" wavelengths does not block wavelengths use for radio or certain radars. However, that Ultra-wideband radar you mentioned earlier, that is specifically wavelength-tuned to be blocked by metahuman-sized things, or else it wouldn't work. The Improved Invisibility spell is already ignoring wavelength limitations based on wavelength/size ratios, so why not just make it work over the continuous band of low-energy EM radiation?

I like your idea about spooky effects while under the spell, but I'd save that for the spirit power of Concealment. For Improved Invisibility, I'd just use the one-way transmission model, with the limitations on outgoing communications, and leave it at that.

I'm amused that, after all this, we've decided to go with Handwavium and game mechanic models anyway. Funny how that works.

I'm not going to deny that my standards for internal consistency in games w/magic isn't capricious. It also depends on the game. I am absolutely not going to question how any spell in D&D4 works. It's a totally fantasy world that makes no attempt to do anything but balance the powers and make it "fun." Shadowrun I treat like I would treat any science-fiction game, using Larry Niven's variation on Clarke's law, reading "Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology." I demand about the same level of internal logic and consistency in Shadowrun as I would in a Star Trek game; that is, I'm not trying to explain how the magic/technology works in detail, but I am trying to get it to a level of plausibility that makes it easy for me, as a scientist, to "suspend my disbelief."

It's just frustrating to me. We've spent the last 24 hours biting each others heads off over technical oversights and typographical inconsistencies, when in the end we agree that it's still impossible, and all we need is a game mechanic that is consistent. I'm glad you feel better about the black hole the mage is wearing on his belt. I wish we could have gotten there without having to get so aggressive.

It's always a shame when these conversations turn hostile. Too much opportunity for misunderstanding in this medium. It's too easy to read a great deal of anger into someone's strongly worded response.

In the future, our forum posts in AR will record simsense emotional state to overlay the text, so we'll know whether someone is actually angry or just being cheeky. That would bring a level of emotional honesty to the enterprise. Oh, and

Okay, I think I'm just feeding the trolls now.





While it has been shown that radar systems can be tuned to detect heavily armed meat, that's not how motion sensors (e.g. automatic door sensors) in SR4 are written up. They specifically include audio and visual sensors, and so whether or not Improved Invisibility defeats radar in your world it will not defeat a Motion Sensor, because Motion Sensors are not Radar. In fact, the only sensors listed in the Technical Security section that could be radar are MAD scanners and Cyberware scanners, which aren't usually used to locate intruders.

To actually find a 'Radar' sensor, you need to dig into Arsenal, pg 59. A Rating 1 Radar system isn't 'faster or cheaper then a stereo camera' - it's actually twice as much. The interesting thing about Radar sensors in Shadowrun is that they are a Capacity 5 system. A standard Rotordrone has a sensor capacity of 6. That means that if in your games 'nearly every drone' has it, they're all either blind or deaf.


I guess my point is, if you're going to be a total dick while telling people how the rules work, try to get the rules right first. Have a nice day!

Yeah, it is not really worth it anymore MikeKozar... it has become a somewhat circular argument with no resolution... I know how we run it at our table, and it works for us... that is all I really need to know at this point...

Keep the Faith

Not saying how the rules work, saying how drones being developed in real life work, and therefore how drone in the future 'should' work.
So if you're going to insist I'm being a total dick and a troll, read my posts for the word 'should' as I do make reference how how things should but not necessarily do work several times.

Also being the first to start name calling does not help defuse any situation Mike, so don't start.

Wait, you mean drones being developed in 2009? I'm confused - were you ever actually talking about Shadowrun here? ...'cause it looks to me like you were running your mouth, trying to make other posters look dumb, got called on it, and now you're backpedaling.

I'll be the first to admit I'm ignorant. I'm no expert at robotics, EM radiation, weapons, or metaphysics. I picked up SR4 three months ago. I do my best to research my posts and make sure I'm giving the best information, and if one of the other users on the board corrects me, I give them the benefit of the doubt. You took apart my post, line by line, and pointed out what was wrong with it. That would be welcome, constructive criticism if you weren't entirely wrong(as I showed above, with citations). If you take the time to attack somebody's post like that without knowing the facts, if you are attacking my thoughts with no good reason to do so other then to denigrate them in the forum, I would say that you *are* acting like a dick. That's not name-calling - it's a description of your behavior. You might be a really cool guy, but right now you're a really cool guy acting like a dick.

I did ignore the word 'should', just like I didn't pay attention to "how how things" and "how drone in" and your other grammatical errors. Lots of the best Dumpshockers are from Germany, so I assumed English was your second language. Nothing wrong with it, but it does hurt your credibility if you hope to hide behind precise wording.

Oh, and as to 'Feeding the Trolls'? That was because I knew that you would have nothing useful to say in response to this other then trying to start a fight. Maybe I'm wrong, though, maybe you want to take this discussion back on track - Did you want to answer any of the questions I've asked you in the last few exchanges? Did you want to offer examples of visual=radio from the game, or real life, or anything? I kinda doubt it. My money is on you reading this post looking for spelling errors so you can keep the flamewar going.

<<EDIT>>

That was out of line. Sorry, man, I let that get personal. I'll try to be more professional in the future. ~MK

It is my humble suggestion that all sides involved find a civil way to discuss your differences. We view baiting just as badly as we do trolling, so I'm sure I could find cause to drop administrative warnings to several posters.

I think you will get a visual display as you also get when using Ultrasound. So it probably means that you will be able to see an image of the shapes that you are picking up on your sensor.

I find the expression "feeding the trolls" to be highly insulting to trolls.

I've always assumed that the Trid Phantasm can absorb the radar signals and give back false radar returns. (Don't ask how--the US spent billions trying to figure it out, eg: F-117, B2, F22, F35, and no I don't have the specs). So it would affect those kinds of sensors. How---it's magic.

That is always one interpretation, of course...

Keep the Faith