Ok, In universe science fiction says that magic can not use anything that has used some kind of electronics to target it.
Else you could cast at pictures on a TV-Screen.
Furthermore: yes, the Cyber-Tail and cyber-eye actually WOULD work, because you paid both for the tail AND for the eye.
If you are willing to shell out 0,1 essence per meter of cable, i guess one could figure something out . .

It's magic. Now STFU. This topic has been rehased to death.

Which is the one excuse I would not accept for such a thing


No.....


and no good answers have yet been given

You won't accept the fact that IT'S MAGIC as an excuse in a Discussion about USING MAGIC?
OK, so you CAN accept the excuse that the mage is setting things AFLAME WITH HIS MIND HOW?
It's Magic. It has It's own rules. The In Universe rules correspond with the RULES AS WRITTEN.
You either accept the answers given or you house-rule, but don't try to tell us it works because it should.
Else you get to play a can do nothing with no usefull skills, no usefull gear, no usefull contacts. nothing.

To reiterate:

Amen.

Do you know any creatures that visually see in radar or ultrasound? No? Me either, that's why you can't cast through it.

Magic can make as little sense as possible, but it still has to be internally consistant.

"You can cast this spell on any living creature."
"Can I cast it on a zombie?"
"No, zombies are dead."
"No they aren't. They normally would be, but they're forcibly kept alive."
"They still don't count as living creatures."
"Why not?"
"Because they're dead."
"That's not what the book says! It says right here they aren't technically dead yet."
"Well, it doesn't fit into the rules."
"Which rules state that zombies aren't living?"
*search* "Well, it doesn't specifically say it's impossible, but it can be interpreted that way."
"But it can also be interpreted that they are alive, and since the spell works on any living thing, the spell works on zombies."
"Well here's this other rule about spells which affect animated objects."
"But zombies don't count as animated objects."
"No, they would."
"Only if they were first dead and then reanimated."
"The rules don't differentiate between two types of zombies though."
"But clearly there are two different types: living creatures that are forcibly kept from death and reanimated corpses."
"No, zombies are animated objects, even if they aren't dead."
"That's not how animation powers work!"

~Umidori

Except that zombies aren't dead, they are undead. As in, they were dead, now they aren't.

Ultrasound doesn't generate an image directly. Data from an ultrasound transceiver has to be processed and massaged and interpreted to create an image. This is the intermediary step previously referred to which makes it impossible to target spells with ultrasound. You're not looking at the real world, but at a computer's interpretation of it.

On an unrelated note, something about ocular drones always bugged me. Who in their right mind would take something that has been rolling around on a potentially filthy floor, stained with who-knows-what, to say nothing of dust, hair, food crumbs, etc., and cram it into their eye socket?

This is why you get a cybertail and put the eyedrone on the end of that.

For exactly the same reasons I won't take 'god did it' and a discussion about religion. It quite simply explains NOTHING.


Well this persons DNA causes the mana to generate some kind of astral shadow(taint) on his spirit, which affects how his spirit acts, and alters how manna is moves through it. This in turn affects the folding patterns in their DNA to change how those shadows are cast, wash rinse repeat enough times that its hard to predict who will have magical talent. A mage's spirit is such that he is allowed to tap into this well of power flowing into the astral from other metaplanes because of how his DNA, and the astral shadows it casts, and the manna of the astral have twisted his spirit. Since this energy seems to be emotionally charged, it is not that far a stretch to imagine a mind is therefore capable of shaping it, and thus generate spell effects. This energy like electricity can cause 'resistance'(drain) when it travels through a 'conductor'(mage) and so can only be channeled in finite quantities (force).


And those rules indicate radar "should" work


Which should make sense, and violate themselves as seldom as possible.


I am not telling you it WORKS because it should. I'm saying that it doesn't work and that it should is a sign that the world has a glaring inconsistency at this point, and that it should be addressed in some fashion which allows the answer to make sense, and thus restore some level of internal consistency to the game.


I have no idea how this statement adds anything constructive.....

Bats, dolphins, I'm sure there are others, but these two can 'see' with ultra sound, and have been shown to be able to distinguish 3D objects using sound alone. This means their spacial and object recognition are highly sound dependent, and for them qualify as 'sight'.

I thought they were bodies possessed by a possession based spirit?

If you've studied the eye, this is actually how normal vision works too. You have 1 layer of photo receptors 3 layers of processing neurons, and 1 layer of neurons that transmits the information to your optic nerve.



Just like when you use any form of cyber eye, especially those with any from of visual enhancement.


Rinse it off with some rubbing alcohol first, and hope the 'dock' for it actually has some kind of antibacterial properties.

At least as ok as I am with a country like the U.S. electing a dragon president when they can't elect a human female, and barely elect a black male. You see the former makes sense as it involves radar using all the same principles as visual light, and only a different wave length. The latter requires a complete violation of the being frightened of what you don't know and/or understand taboo hardwired into the human mind since there were humans.

Echo-location is not ultra sound. They also don't use it as "vision" per se as the creatures listed also can see, it's a means of spatial recognition, much like proprioception.

Apparently you missed the fact that most people were surprised by that one.

You also apparently missed the memo that by 2050 we will have solved all the world's problems.*

*Note: Ray Kurzweil is a guy who should know what he's talking about.

1) proprioception I thought was knowing the placement of your joints relative to your body.

2) I would strongly beg to differ with you definition of vision then. It is a non light based method of extracting infromation about the environment to allow them to form an accurate mental 3d map of their suroundings which allow them to interact effectively with their environment in situations where light is less useful.

For these 2 species, sonar (the same mechanism as ultrasound) is actually at least as, if not more useful to them then sight. A bat without access to light can fly just fine, a bat without access to sound will likely ram into objects until it breaks a wing and kills itself. Dolphins are not so dissimilar, which is why the very high intensity sonar systems on US warships are causing such a stir among those who actually care about the dolphins.

Still not a property of their eyes. When we start seeing materials relating to awakened dolphins firing spells at people through use of echo-location, we'll talk.

<edit> i was using proprioception as a means of spatial awareness (like sonar/echo-location). I can't see my arm but I know where it is in relation to me. And usually how to not bump it into things I don't want to without seeing it.

I am simply stating it is how they 'see'. It is adequately dissimilar from light based vision that I could see being unable to cast spells using it, there tends not the be the transit of particles which contain information, but the transmission of information through a particle based medium.

But this does not explain the radar bit.

And because I like to argue when I'm board...



Ahhh, but just because they are both using photon reflection does not make them the same. They use VERY different frequencies, and that plays a huge role in vision.

Visual light is in the frequency range of 400THz - 789THz.
"Near Infrared" (which is the heat vision thermographic is based off of I'm 99% sure) has a range of 120THz - 400THz.
Low Light vision is based off of a cat's eye sight, needing only 1/6 of the light we do to see. That is the regular visual light frequency, but the cat eye has what's called a tapetum, a reflective layer behind the retina. That can easily be the cyber solution is to insert a man made tapetum.

Radar operates on a frequency of 3MHz - 10.5GHz (UWB on the 10.5GHz end).

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...ic-Spectrum.png

Lets compare Near Infrared to Ultra Wide Band (the closest to visual frequencies).
789000000000000 - end of visual spectrum
120000000000000 - low end of infrared
10500000000 - high end of radar

The GHz frequency is extremely far removed from the THz frequency.

Now consider this:
You record a sound clip of yourself saying "Hello there, my name is Tom". Now you slow it to half speed. Still recognizable. But lets say you slowed it to one hundredths the speed. Now it's so slow you can't make recognizable difference from one letter sound to the next let alone words. You brain can't interpret it.

It's a similar situation. You can make the leap that the brain can interpret Near Infrared, it's just that they eyes can't normally process it and filter it out before sending the signal to the optic nerve. But radar is on such a different level.... I would argue that the brain's visual cortex couldn't handle it, and it may even cause brain damage if this signal was sent to it directly.

The solution? A fictitious representation! Rather then send the very different signal directly, why not create a picture? That's how we currently see in those frequencies to begin with, a picture or video of the image but converted into a spectrum we can see and THEN processed by our eyes. And in our future world they have the ability to make that video appear right into your vision. But it's still not the actual image, your mind isn't receiving the actual signal.

See the big thing here is that Thermo and low light need no conversion for the brain. They just mod the eye to allow a larger frequency band into the optic nerve. Radar, Ultrasound, and UWB need a conversion step to change that GHz band into the THz band.

Ok, hopefully that provided a good "real world" explanation. n_n

No, no, they're just ill persons infected with the Frankenstein Strain of HMHVV.

"So, you're saying that all of existence was in one incredibly dense point... and then it exploded."
"Yup."
"How?"
"We're working on that."
"What was before that?"
"More of the same."
"Well, where did everything come from originally?"
"It already existed."
"So... the stuff that existed, because it did, exploded."
"Yup."
"... and what was it like before the explosion?"
"Don't know. Really thorough explosions generally have that effect."




Sound is not sight. (Not sure why that has to be pointed out.) It doesn't matter if a creature uses sound instead of sight. Unless there are some awakened bats or dolphins that are available as an example?



Could you please respond to multiple people using one responce? Do you really need to use five responces in a row?

It really isn't. If you pass light through a lens (or even just a small aperture; see camera obscura) it creates an image with no further intervention. The same is not true of sound.

And that image is meaningless until it is processed by neural or electronic means into something the brain can use.

Retinae serve only to convert a natural image into electrochemical impulses in the optic nerve. The image you get from ultrasound is synthetic, not natural. It's the same deal as electronic binoculars, or glasses/contacts with vision enhancements. Optical images can be used for spell targeting, digital images cannot. A cybereye creates optical images, glasses and contacts (and ultrasound) create digital images.

I see that particular option this way... You may indeed be able to "Target" an opponent through the wall with Radar, but the wall still intervenes and that would be where the spell actually impacts... leaving the target aware that you are trying to kill him...

But hey, I would never try to target with Radar Anyways... seems kind of crazy to me...

Keep the Faith

Are we talking NPC's surprised? or SR players surprised?
The later makes sense here, but I'm not really sure which you mean.


So some fiction writers came up with the idea the world would be at peace by then? Did they include the destruction of most major nations, the reintroduction of magic, the emergence of several non human intelligent species, and the occasional globally devastating plague?

From what I've read in the article it doesn't look like it.

Former.



Raymond Kurzweil is an American inventor and futurist. He is the author of several books on health, artificial intelligence (AI), transhumanism, the technological singularity, and futurism.

So besides inventing/improving things (like Optical Character Recognition and text-to-speech, and speech-to-text) he spends his time figuring out what the Technological Singularity means and what kind of world we can expect on the other side, such as intelligent machines.

My point was that he doesn't know and/or understand human nature. You know, just like you accused me of not understanding.

If you go back to that link and scroll all the way to the bottom, then back up a bit to this comment you'll see...well, I'll let you read it.

Oddly enough I'm not asking the brain to interpret it directly. Just as your brain does not interpret light directly. Also the brain runs at ~ 60 hz, or somewhere around there, as that is the shortest period of time on object can exist in the average human visual field and be seen.

The radar image is going to be processed by some 'device' just as a visual image is going to be processed by some device in some kind of eye. In a natural eye this processing occurs in 4 layers of neurons, and in a cyber eye, this occurs on some chip, to allow for graphical overlays, switching vision modes and the like.



The eyes as near as I understand do not actually contain a receptor FOR near infrared. It would not be a matter of filtering it out, as there would be no data to filter. Also the brain processes data spatially, which is to say points on the cortex can be mapped to specific regions of the retina, with the fovia taking up more space on the cortex, and the perifery taking up less proportional to the actual area on the retina. As the brain can color and black and white using the same cortex, all that would happen is that the radar system would tie into the part of the optic nerve responsible for night vision and use the black and white processing of the brain to say "yes radar return" or "no radar return" and create a black and white image of what your sensor is seeing.


Then study some neuropsychology, you'd be surprised what the brain can do, I know I am.



You mean like the eye does already?



It doesn't with the actual eyes either. There is substantial processing and filtering which occurs in natural eyes. For example an object CAN physically emit both red and green light at the same time, but you will NEVER see a redish green object. The human eye uses the same receptor for red and green, and speeds up a signal for one, and slows it for the other color. If both are detected at the same time, you 'tend' to seen brown if anything at all. The eye also has a contrast increasing feature which highlights the edges of objects, and where colors change. What you SEE, is NOT the signal your eye is receiving. Cyber eyes, with low light, thermo graphic, vision displays, ect. make this problem even worse, and not better.



Nice attempt at techno babble, but sorry, no. It doesn't work like that. As I said before the brain only works at about 60 hz, so changing the band like that would make no difference at all.

Which is really odd as the image created by cyber eyes is digital. The use some kind of photo cell (can ONLY create digital images) to release electrons to stimulate different electrodes which would be run through a processor to clean up the image and do all the processing a natural eye does, and then connected to the optical nerve to run through the brain, but the mage can cast through cyber eyes. So obviously digital images created by, and processed by ware paid for with essence do in fact work.



Not paid for with essence, thus not really part of the conversation.


Sorry, all of the above create digital images, but only the first one is paid for with essence.

Sounds like an argument for not being able to use NATURAL vision for spell targeting. n_n

Anyhow, it was a fun bit of research and I learned a few things and thanks for the info. Still, my motto is if there is a rule in place for game balance purposes but it doesn't make perfect sense in a real world situation to give it some leeway. It's RAW and a good ruling, so I'm going to try to make an explanation that does fit rather then pick it apart.

But regardless if the brain could interpret radar like that or not, pretty sure all those vision modes are only offered as AR overlays anyhow, either as partial on top of your vision or as a complete AR overlay replacement of everything you see. And a picture does not provide a link. Maybe real science says you COULD hook up a radar to your optic nerves but I don't really see the benefit of arguing for it while arguing for a good rule does make sense to me. My 2 .

The simple fact is that the spectrum of the EM band we call visible light and infrared can be used to target spells; the rest of the spectrum cannot.

Perhaps the scholars of the Sixth World know a concrete reason why and they just don't want to tell us. Or maybe they are as confused as we are, and solving that problem is the focus of much resaerch.

Regardless radar and ultrasound just don't work for targeting, and other than "game balance" you don't get an answer for why.

—
IMHO, neither the wavelengths of radar nor the mechanics of sound transmit whatever magic actually requires for targeting. But in the end, it does not matter; only photons at certain wavelengths delivered to your retina (natural or cyber, without prior processing) can be used for targeting magic, anything else (like headware) just isn't good enough.

No. The artificial retina in a cybereye serves the same purpose and functions in a similar way as the retina in a natural eye (which is also a "photo cell," albeit an organic one). It translates the optical image created by light passing through the optical lens into the selfsame electrochemical impulses in the optic nerve. The retina does not create the image. The lens creates the image. That's why the image is optical and not digital.

Unless the eye contains a series of mirrors and lenses which directs the light down a fiber optic line.

Sourcebook citation?




-np

Citation?

Oh shit, let me go get my whip! I LOVE dead horses!

My point is that 'processing' is not enough to render an image invalid to be able to target spells with, especially if that processor is part of your, either naturally, or paid for with essence.


You're welcome to your opinion, I however would disagree about the good ruling portion of the above statement.


It can


Because I feel it is a poor ruling and it does not make sense to me. There is nothing that stops a machine gun from punching through a wall and blowing my chest open if a sammy has the system installed, it meets all the criteria that have been discussed about needing the actual photons reflected from, or emitted by the target, and ruling made purely for the sake of balance which contradict the fluff, and all previous ruling tend to get under my skin.

It seems to me a spirit with the power 'realistic form' could turn into a radar platform, being able to send, recieve and interpret radar signals using only the body it has at present, this SHOULD allow it to see just fine using the radar. This means the spirit would have an los....

Physics. The image is either transmitted with electrons, which occur is discrete quantized units, and thus are by definition digital, or they use photons, which are discrete quantized units....

The lens 'focuses' the image. It creates nothing. The retina translates the image into a series of electrochemical impulses which are also processed by an acceding series of neurons before reaching the inner most transmission layer in the eye. The "image" you see doesn't actually exist until it hits the brain.

Actually there is. Its called "shooting through a barrier." It tends to work in the defender's favor (depending on wall material and size of the gun).

@Mordinvan, please just stop it. You're not going to convince anyone you're right.

@Everyone else: OT here... since the only reason you remove contacts is clean them, then a cybereye (which uses electrostatic repulsion to keep dirt away) could keep a contact lens on it constantly... So my "question" is, why get a cybereye higher than rating 2?

Get some of the crap internal to the eye and then get the rest in a skinlinked contact. Use some nanites to "glue" the contact lenses to your eye and it's like you have rating 4 eyes. Sure you can't use the stuff in the contacts for spell targeting, but I'm talking things like smartlink.

HMMM....

I would like to point out that it says ENHANCES, not replaces... in my games, do not expect to cast anthing requiring line of sight with cybereyes... ever, regardless of mods. In the background universe, your eyes no longer connect to your soul, and even though your brain is interpreting a signal, it doesn't filter through your mana filter (all of this is my own read of the universe.)

That's fine, just note that it directly contradicts the materials.

Where does it? I have seen nothing that says cybereyes allowes line of sight or astral perception.

Nowhere, since SR1, has it ever been forbidden, either. Also, previous edition sample mages have had cyber eyes.

You paid for the eyes with essence, they are now a part of you. Just like a mage with a cyber arm can deliver touch spells through it.

Also that whole "paid with essence" thing. Which is in the book.

You don't need sight at all for astral perception, it's a separate sense entirely that doesn't use the eyes.