Another Matrix question. If you are running in VR can your persona interact with someone connected to the same node in AR? So, for example, Alice is accessing a library in AR can Bob's persona appear even though he's running VR but accessing the same node (assuming Bob has found Alice's icon etc.).

Everyone's icon (not persona, but it's basically the same thing) is there regardless, yes.

So would it make sense to have an AR-club have an alternate VR component or would that be redundant?

Hm. Well, I mean, a node is a node. You can access it however you like. I guess it's hard to dance while in VR, though?

Well the idea is there's this really awesome AR-club in Seattle that has a VR-club component (which they talk about in Unwired p.17) that you can still access if you are unable to get to the "real thing." I was just wondering if ther ewas an option for VR patrons to access the AR section and vice versa.

Heh, just a -6 penalty. Hilarious mental image though.

Oh, I see what you mean, Krojar. Well, the AR-users are physically *in* the club, while the VR users would be seeing a reality-scaped replica. Part of that could indeed be making everyone's icon look like a person (dancing or not). There are no separate 'sections' unless you (that is, the node admin) set it up that way (and possibly that would require at least 2 nodes). AFAIK.

Oi Chums,

I beleive that the V.R. Users would actually be projected out onto the dance floor through advanced holographic projectors, awesome totally wild V.R. persona and all, and could interact with anyone who was utilizing the clubs A.R. environment via glasses or cyber-eyes or what have you. There would even be simsense drinks for you to partake in for V.R. club goers. I hear some V.R. drinks even have hangover ASIST programs included for the real effect. Though you would have to figure out how to get your clothes to smell of ciggarettes and vomit on your own.

Projected users: nifty. Kind of a kitchy, novelty gimmick, but yeah, sounds doable.

I understand how that's confusing and I'm not really sure there's a RAI answer for that question. I've also asked myself what does a VR persona see when he sees another user who is accessing the same node through AR. I mean it ultimately depends on the sculpting. I tend to see the AR user to be in more of a chat room and might have a little window that would show you just one view of what the VR sculpting of the inside of the node would look like... AR interacts with nodes and with other icons in the matrix more like how i'm interacting with dumpshock forum but with much more multimedia thrown in....but still i have to at least mentally select windows around and i'm manipulating visual icons. Maybe a VR user would see you more as a member on list of icons rather than a fully interacting persona icon of someone who is also using VR. For cybercombat...that's tricky...cuz how does a list entry attack a VR agent icon? That would make a good case for the VR representation of an AR user would just be the same as his VR icon...but just not as animated...it has some automated movements like say a video-game mob....and would fight as such....and then when you pop into VR...a third party would see your icon spring into more spontaneous authentic action.

On another note, I still wonder how VR is actually faster for all tasks compared to AR...for example posting to dumpshock...let's say i do it from AR and then from VR...i'm stilll limited by how fast my brain can compose a message.

Let's just say typing up this whole post takes a complex action...well in 1 turn (3 sec)...in AR I could compose 1 post and in VR I could compose 3 posts in the same time....but composing is composing....it's how fast my mind works. I feel both AR and VR would have instant thought typing, so what would account for the difference in speed? Any thoughts from anyone?

My only idea is that in AR...files are really stored in some sort of ASCII code ...where the meaning can only be deciphered by a user through visual reading of words if you're using AR glasses....or if you're using a sim module, direct projection to the visual cortex. In VR the visual cortex is not even involved if you read a "text file"....the whole meaning of the author is stored as neural network information and it automatically writes the same analogous neural network to the "readers" brain. I.e. you basically store thoughts unfiltered by visual processing so it's much more instant. However if you try to access a VR "text" file in AR it is automatically translated to "ASCII" to be actually read by the visual cortex and then interpreted by the higher functions of the brain. That's just an idea i had. Basically it cuts out the middle man and goes straight to the neural representations of pure thoughts in the brain.
...of course those thoughts in this case would be word thoughts....so it stores the word "bird" not as a 4 letter english word but as the concept of a bird which somehow i guess advances in neuro-science would show has an invariant neural representation that can be understood by all metahuman brains.....almost like chinese characters. To actually store the meaning of the post would be a waste of storage space because it's more efficient to let the meaning of a sentence to be formed in the brain instead of being preformed in computer format and then shot to the brain.

Oi Chums,

I had the same question a while back. I think that, like Inca said, it would depend on the sculpting of the system. But an A.R. user woud have to have an Icon of some sort for the V.R. user to interact with or at least identify as another user. So where I have an awesome silver, clown, bat, dragon persona the A.R. user has a generic green stick figure.

As far as what the A.R. user sees I think it would be very much like what we do today on the web. Web pages and the like with the addition of lots of 3-D interaction. When the A.R. user starts slinging code thats exactly what he would see. Code. He has Icons that depict his hacking progs and then the actual lines of code for the node he is trying to crack. Go V.R. and it all gets an Icon and it's back to how it was sculpted to look in the first place.

Holo-projectors are not necessary, as the AR overlay of the meat customers can display the icons of the VR guests as AR objects without trouble, and either add sound overlay if you're wired for it or add pop-up texts as needed.

In the parallel virtual reality, the icons of the meat customers can be displayed and animated according to their body's position/gesture/speach for the benefits VR users and bingo, everybody can interact (at least socially) no matter if they are physically present or simply connected.

Basically, yes. The idea is that AR is direct output, but the input flows in through the normal visual channels, whereas VR is direct input and output. It bypasses the perceiving step and arrives as pre-interpreted information. ..which is why ASIST and hotsim are so potentially dangerous for brainwashing purposes. Your brain is being bombarded with information which it doesn't process so much as integrate.


Also, the VR in AR club sounds familiar. Closest I could find was the Dante's Inferno entry from Unwired's Sample Systems section. Could swear that I read something about people dancing along with ARO versions of virtual club goers....

I've been thinking about this too. I imagine it like this:

A part of the Matrix is devoted to AR; that's the part that links online content to specific physical coordinates. Like a game world map you can walk around on. People with AR perceive that part of the matrix around them, a bit like astral perception.

VR users project their icon around the place, and to AR they look a lot like magicians projecting into the astral, but in this case into AR.

Likewise, VR projectors can see the AR of any place they're projecting to, including everyone who has an AR "skin".



To make all this work out reasonably well, most people need filters, because otherwise a place could get really crowded if a lot of people show up in VR, like at a concert. So people would only see the people "relevant" to their interests, and perhaps use profile codes to limit who'll bother to see them. All this can be played with by hackers of course.

Well, I imagine the "max occupancy" of the club would actually be somewhat lower than the actual occupancy to allow VR users "room" (though the number of VR users who wanted access to the AR floor would be capped as well). Assuming that anyone with VR was only allowed to access the AR floor if they had Metahuman icons, how would one avoid "clipping"? It seems that, from the description of AR "pets" and other things, this wouldn't be too much trouble.

In my mind the interaction between AR and VR is relatively simple as long as both have some form of contact with each other.

If we assume the AR user is either troded in or using a combination of gloves, buds and glasses, I cant see it being difficult for the node in question (assuming it overlays the physical location) to give the correct overlay of a similar user who is meeting via VR.

I was watching the third resident evil movie a couple of nights ago and they have a couple of scenes in a boardroom with a setup that could easily be mirrored in the SR universe. In the movie you have a boardroom set up with a large desk and a number of chairs around it. Multiple locations all have the same set up and each see's a holographic representation of the others within their own room. This enables a multi person conference without needing to be there.

In SR a similar setup would be enable by a combination of VR and AR using a simple setup. You would again have the recreated room in each venue (for the AR users) but instead of holographic representations it is a simple overlay viewed by the normal means (glasses, cybereyes or troded in). The counter effect would be someone in VR entering the node which would give them a virtual recreation of the real room and fill it with the icons of the other users.

A club location set up that way is also plausible and in some respects follows the write up for Dante's which says the nodes are based on the real club and even the real club uses AR overlays for some of the dress up effects on different levels of the club (flames and such).

edit for spelling

Yeah, there'd definitely need to be an Icon dress code.

Still, some hacker might bust in using a 10-foot-tall dancing penis as his icon, just to grief people.

That's what Reality Filter is for, right? Or VR-Scaping, or something like that. Whatever it's called.

great thought. with enough VR IPs i can go dancing with all my girlfriends the same night.

the nice thing about VR is that bouncers do not need to be brutes.

I could see SR corps do it in similar ways. Hell, virtual board meetings have been a staple of cyberpunk-related scifi for ages. One of the robocop movies (or tv series) had the OCP board meet via rotatable displays rather then chairs.

Or how about a real life example? http://www.coolest-gadgets.com/20100826/ntts-troom/

VR (virtual) in a AR (physical) club. Virtual ghosts in a physical world. Second class citizens. Possibly banned. Definitely limited in interactivity.
AR (command) in a VR (mental) club. 'bots in a world of players. Second class citizens. Possibly banned. Definitely limited in interactivity.

I like your idea, that's pretty cool, stylistically. However, if everyone in the club, or a lot of people in the club, were using AR, there'd be no need for the incredibly sophisticated and expensive holograms. Wouldn't/Couldn't the persona of the VR attendee be projected into their AR? An interesting question, obviously. I can definitely see the benefits that virtual attendance could have if you're using the place for a meeting, or you're a creepy stalker, lol. But it seems like it would only actually be "fun" if you were into people watching. In the end, I went to clubs to interact with people. If you were looking for cybersex, it seems like there would be more dedicated Matrix locations for that. The dangerous line a club promoter would walk would be that people go to bars to interact and mingle and well, let's be honest, get drunk and take somebody home. If a sizable percentage of people are only "there" virtually, it could have a negative effect on the vibe. Clubs thrive on the intimacy factor that forces interaction. There's a local club here that comes to mind. Great location, very nice, very clean... always empty except for when they have drink specials. And it's because their layout lacks that closeness. An interesting thought.

Still, liking the visual. Would look cool in a movie scene. And the last line made me laugh.

It's not just clubbing; you could go to any number of places virtually, like political rallies or pop concerts. The nice thing is that venue capacity can be "virtually" inflated this way. Multiple VR icons in the same physical space aren't really a problem, you just use a filter to only see the other people you want to see.

The amusing thing is, the people of the Sixth World already know about astral projection, through Karl Kombatmage trids if nothing else. So when this technology is implemented, they'll be sure to note the similarities.

Oh, it would definitely catch on. It just seems to me it would end up being a fad, and once the novelty of it wore off, it would fade away. Human beings are social creatures. Some of us socialize in different ways, sure. But that's why there are different venues. A virtual/physical club is mixing two different demographics. The gimmick would be cool for a while, but in the end, people go to clubs for a reason, and people who don't, don't for a reason.

You're right about rallies and conferences and such. The technology is really only a step up from the virtual conferencing that exists today. The ability to virtually "attend" a political rally or something else would definitely be technology people would be interested in.

Not so sure about concerts though. Not that people wouldn't like it. They definitely would. But it seems like it might cut down on the total revenue that can be generated and the longevity of the tour. If that was the case, the promoters and record execs would definitely be very selective about what concerts or events one could virtually attend. The Rolling Stones "Leonization Rocks!" Tour? Maybe. The hottest new pop sensation? Probably not. That ruins the exclusivity of actually attending.

I have always played it that when you are in AR your persona appears in any nodes that you subscribe to, just as if you were in VR. The only difference is the method with which you control and receive feedback from that persona. Granted a persona/icon controlled via AR means would probably look "stiff" and slow to respond (as others have mentioned), but in all other respects it can do anything in the node that a persona in VR can do.

The one thing not to forget is that for the VR user, being there virtually would be like being there in the flesh as all the senses gets simulated via the ASIST interface. So it is in no way comparable to someone today attending by way of webcam from the easy chair at home. And anyone using AR via trodes (and to a lesser extent gloves and glasses) could also interact with the person to the point of touching (or even smelling). The only issue would be passing them physical objects.

And that would probably be the correct way of doing it. This as there is no real separation of icon and persona, expect that icons are a subset of the persona (or a persona is a superset of icons). The icon is just the multimedia part of the persona, so that someone quickly glancing over the "local" area could spot them (much like how a distinct icon on the desktop is easier to spot then having to read a long list of text to spot the right title, only that in SR those icons are singing and dancing if the designer wants them to).

But a potential issue comes to mind. How do a persona step into the seattle streets? Is there a unmentioned super-node for the greater seattle area, that every AR user walking down the street is logged into (hardly, as the SR effects are supposedly broadcasted as ARO). So can a VR user basically make his persona broadcast some kind of ARO version of its icon, and in that way appear somewhere for anyone using AR nearby? I wonder if this is a issue with SR4 rules: that while the AR and VR rules overlap, VR seems stuck in SR3 on key issues. As in, VR exist, AR exist, there is some overlap, but VR do not build on top of AR or vice versa.

I guess that's because Matrix isn't Astral; it's not a reflection of the real world. VR is node-centric, and different for every node. The Matrix is not *for* walking down the street and seeing people (unless you're running some kind of Foursquare social network thing, of course!).

I don't see any contradictions. It's not like AR is the matrix overlayed on real life....it's totally separate from VR sculpting. There's no seattle streets in VR..... I seriously doubt someone has coded a whole exact replica of seattle to be the sculpting for some node.
AR just creates icons and graphics that pop up overlayed on the senses responding to different things the visual cortex and perhaps audio brain receptors receive from the real world. Like if your eyes passed over a nice jacket in a street window....you would see a little icon pop up next to the jacket running an advertisement or something.....or if you looked up at a cloudy sky...a blue sky would be overlayed....although I feel it would have to look like really good CGI because the only computer generated images that actually look real are in UV nodes.
Now I feel the matrix doesn't really look like anything to AR users like was said above...it's just a bunch of code and websites....however i remember reading in fluff that you could open up a window and see the matrix sculpting of nodes....kind of like as if you were playing Quake Live ...like a FPS.

The original question was about what a VR user sees when an AR user is in a node with him or her. Like was said above...i think it would be a lot like when you use a skill like mining or some emote in WoW......just a canned animation. So hacking, scanning.....or dancing in a club....would be a canned animation so that VR users could understand it. So the AR user would just type "dance" in a little window and then then his VR icon dances....and maybe he sees it if he's got a little window open to the VR sculpting of the node...but he doesn't have to...and it's not very useful to him. Once he switches into VR however, all that visual stuff becomes incredibly important. He no longer has to type "goto dance floor 7" while in AR....he just wills himself there.

Hence the creepy stalkers using it, heh.

My understanding of AR is that the AR users wouldn't get any kind of physical feedback unless they were using simsense. And at that point, you're going to be acting "virtually" since your awareness of the other physical patrons would be significantly lowered. Now you just have a club full of people stumbling into eachother. Well, I guess it's no worse than a street full of people paying more attention to their AR than their surroundings stumbling into eachother, lol.

The interaction of AR and VR is just one of those things you have to choose to accept or choose not to. Like the old "Reality Filters" from the earlier editions. Can you imagine the kind of processing power it would take to completely warp the Matrix to appear as you wanted it to? Forcing your cyberdeck to fully load and then reload and reskin everything you came across? And what serious decker would sacrifice anything that could cost them, even in microseconds, response time? I'm sure the RF would be fun for tooling along in the Matrix, but nobody is going to strain their processors trying to make Mitsuhama's stone garden look like Disneyland when the difference is getting burned by Pluto or slipping past that digital samurai.

I don't see how they would or why they would need to. It's a virtual world, not a physical world.

I can see a club with a lot of AR simply not letting Virtual People in. Their theme is to enhance a real physical experience, not create a new virtual experience. It's Reality+ not Second Life.

And the connections between Nodes isn't necessarily physical. From a node perspective, it's more in the club owner's interest to connect all the nodes for the clubs he owns than to connect to the unrestricted street. That way a happening in Seattle can be part of the augmentation happening in Boston. (All the clubs connected to each other for New Years, as an example.)

In the physical world, not all clubs are open to all people.
In the virtual world, not all nodes are open to all people or connected to other nearby nodes. (i.e. when you leave the club and go to the street, you get logged out of their AR. If you want street AR, log into the street.)

Edit: Thinking about an upscale AR club, I'm thinking Wi-fi inhibiting wallpaper. Come in the entrance, have them check you SIN and membership. Once you pass, you go down the hall and through the door. The hallway design is perpendicular to the street and internal matrix device so there's never a matrix channel to the street. Once you're in, you're connected to an AR node that has nothing to do with the outside world.

Reality Filter is in the current edition, and it specifically increases your Response (when it works). Kind of a gamble, but that's exactly what it's for.

Virtually hanging out with their AR using chummers perhaps?

One concept i have in mind is when a team is breaking into a place, the hacker can have his persona walk along side the team. This to aid in interaction (and at table playability), but would require that the persona can "know" about the area around the team.

Gloves provide feedback on anything "touched" (hell, they can be used to sense real data about physcial objects). And there are feedback clothing and specific implants (olfactory and taste booster, touchlink) that allow a person to have the sensory data of a simsense user, without using simsense.

Personally, I always use AR with trodes, so various senses are indeed an option.

That's still using simsense you realize, right? Simsense covers more ground than just the concept of slapping on the rig to experience a full submersion experience like BTL.

Regardless, it seems like a lot of effort to go through for the AR user to be able to interact with the VR patrons and not much with the real world ones. And you're still not actually interacting with someone, just virtually. Why bother going to the club at all? Seems like you could get virtually molested for cheaper using just typical simsense or a VR chatroom.

Though, it does make for an interesting idea for some kind of AR corporate getaway retreat for sexually frustrated sararimen.

Check out Dante's Inferno in Seattle 2072 and The Black Shogun AR bar in Ghost Cartels.

As far as recieving AR, I always figured that AROs are broadcast openly so they are visible to any who view AR and don't block them (spam anyone?). However, I'm sure more private forms of AR would require an actual subscription to a node to have access to it.

Private AR club might look like a small number of people talking to the air in a park while someone subscribed to the right node might see a dance floor and a crowd of VR users or AR users at another location that is linked to that one.

If the team has a tacnet, as a hacker, I'd rather be in the tacnet running defense and co-ordinating than hopping from local access point to local access point drawing attention to the team. Also, by being in the tacnet, the persona knows about the area around the team. Since the tacnet is probably within mutual range of any targets needing hacking, it a decent launch point.

That being said, in 4e, I'd rather be there in person. I wouldn't want to be following the team via public nodes and AR. I don't like depending on something I know is insecure or in my enemy's hands and public nodes are both.

Sculpting...