No. See, the original 'image' (the direct, optical, photon-based perception) is *partially overlaid* with black (or any color; opaque) pixels, exactly as if you held something in front of your eyes, or yeah, painted spots on your glasses. It's a filter, sure, but not a substitute.

So no one watched the Kids in the Hall?
Say "Nobody home" while holding up your thumb in front of your eye, blocking out unwanted targets.

For mages, they just crush your head.

If I hide under a blanket, can I be stunballed?

Of course not.

Unless you're wearing it as clothing. Clothing have a special magic exception.

At my table none of this will fly. But if it's suggested/tried, I might let it go, just so the party can be attacked by a bunch of security guys waving white sheets in front of themselves.

You are mistaken:

Oh and beware of cardboard boxes.

If you were using the enhanced image for targeting purposes I might agree, but you're not. You are not altering any portion of the image you wish to target. The only photons being affected between you and the target are those you coming from things you don't want to hit in the first place. Oddly you've just argued the reverse of your own case.

*shrug* You should do what you want at your table, Bearclaw. But the requirement of 'seeing the target' is one of the clearer points: you indeed can't cast at someone behind cardboard, etc.

In my books the word photon isn't used once.
You can't jump back and forth between physics and magic.
Physics tell us, that magic does not work. So it actually ends there.

Okay, let's dispense with photons and physics.

We know that visual sense acquisition of the subject is required to target a direct spell on the physical plane.

We know that we can't use technological visual aids that substitute themselves for the character's own visual senses to target direct spells.

A pair of AR glasses in no way substitutes for the character's visual senses, when all it is doing is creating opaque overlays over some areas of field of view.

The visual sensory information is passing straight through the clear portions of the glasses unaltered, unprocessed, and unmodified in any way.

The technological visual aid in this case is NOT substituting ANYTHING.



-k

Optical Devices
These optical aids have many uses, one of which is enabling a magician
to obtain optical (non-electronic) line of sight for spellcasting from
cover. Spellcasting targeted through optics this way suffers a –3 dice
pool modifier. These devices cannot take vision enhancements.
Endoscope
Mage Sight Goggles
Periscope

Note how these are explicitly stated to provide non-electronic line of sight. Note that glasses are not included. By process of elimination, glasses that can accept visual enhancements must then be electronic.

Just because they are electronic does not mean they substitute for the user's visual senses.

People keep glossing over that but this is important.

What substitutes for visual senses? Cameras. Digital-only binoculars (which are really just a pair of tubes with a camera on one end and a display screen on the other). VR feeds. Anything that takes visual data, converts it into digital form, and then recreates it on a screen or an image link.

LCD-style overlay glasses, even if electronic, do not substitute for the wearer's visual senses.




-k

The relevant quoted examples ("cameras, electronic binoculars, Matrix feeds, etc.") do not state digital-only binoculars, merely electronic. Binoculars are lenses that let through light. If this happens in an electronic fashion, it can't be used to cast spells through. Electronic glasses differ from electronic binoculars only in how many lenses there are. Don't try to add any additional definition where none exists RAW.

You are right, electronic binoculars could be either cameras with attached screens, or pass-through type overlaying data on a lens.

You seem to have, like Irion, glossed over the very thing that I commented on other people glossing over. Picking on an incidental detail of my post while completely ignoring the main thrust.

The question that determines whether it's usable is not just "electronic" vs "non-electronic".

It's "Does it substitute for the visual sense, as opposed to just overlaying it?"



-k

I'm claiming that an overlay puts a layer of electronics between the mage and the target, and thus makes it unusable for targeting purposes. I would see no issue with a selective overlay, provided that it came from some sort of projector, but I do not think that the glasses work in that fashion.

Except that merely having a layer of electronics is not the entire required qualification.

It must ALSO substitute the visual sense.

Substitute. As in 'replace'. As in, "I am not seeing the image anymore, instead I am now seeing a separate image in it's place."




-k

As in, instead of seeing the unedited scenario, I'm now seeing an edited one.
Let's just agree to disagree on this one

You can do what you want at your table, but the baseline is that you can cast while wearing glasses, that holding a thumb in front of you face obscures LOS and valid direct-spell area targets, and that LCDs in glasses only *partially block* the view, not substitute it.

More along the lines of "instead of seeing AR through normal vision, I am now seeing night-camera, thermographic, or ultrasound." If it works like you are claiming it does then every corp-man worth saving should be in a chameleon suit so he's immune to spells.

Strawman arguement. According to the rules, auras extend slightly beyond clothing and armour, so he ain't.

Were Negator Glasses another slapdash horror spawned in War! ?

I don't think they are particularly plausible from a tech viewpoint anyway. I guess I could see them reacting to block out friendlies if said friendlies were all decked out in flourescent pink (or whatever) jumpsuits, but not sure they would be smart enough to tell apart darkened room black from the de rigeur black colour of runners standard getups. And even if they could detect friendlies clothing perfectly, as I mentioned in my last post, auras extend beyond clothing/armour (I guess they could hedge and extend the blackened area slightly beyond the clothing, but if you wanted to be safe so a friendly standing less than 1m in front of you was safe, you would potentially be blotting out quite large areas around a friendly at range) ...

Like Halimm and Irion I am still not happy with an electronic overlay not affecting a mage's LOS at my table, but YMMV. And no, Nobody's Home thumb wars don't count either, especially during combat where people are moving fast and unpredictably ...

would this work:

http://www.google.com/imgres?um=1&hl=e...,r:21,s:0,i:154

Auras are irrelevant for spellcasting. You either target the physical form(for spells cast on the physical plane) or the astral form (for spells cast on the astral plane). An aura is just the reflection of the physical form on the astral plane. It can never be affected by spells.
The extension is only relevant fro perceiving the aura of people wearing clothes.

@Bearclaw: No, the feet and a part of the head are exposed.

@Yerameyahu
Any electronic vision which replaces you vision is a no go. (And it does not matter if one pixel is changed or everyhting. Your input has been edited, replaced)
Unless there is a specific rule allowing it, it has to be out.
Arguments based on physics are not worth a damn if it comes to magic. Hell, magic in Shadowrun is not even logical in some instances...

Really? So all I have to do to become immune to magic is hold up an LCD screen in the air with a dot on it.

Any caster looking at me will have an 'edited' spot in his visual field due to the LCD.

Bam! He can't target me!




-k

Again, Irion, there's simply no reason to say that 'partially filtered' (as I used the term) = 'edited' = 'replaced'. Glasses with darkened pixels are literally identical to glasses with painted spots, and the same as holding your thumb in front of you. This is in no sense 'substituted'.

@Yerameyahu
And why should this reasoning matter?
Magic does not work in the real world. Try to explain improved invisibility with physics. Try to explain why I have to overcome the OR of the camera.

If it is a physical effect and I am invisible for one person, I would be invisible for every person and every camera.
SR does not work that way.

@KarmaInferno
If it totally covers you, yes. If it does not, the caster can just hit the part of you, where he does not need to cast through the screen.

That'd only work with targeting from Astral Sight.


This is some form of logical fallacy, I just can't define it.

For serious: Irion, I didn't say anything about the real world. In SR4, "glasses with darkened pixels are literally identical to glasses with painted spots, and the same as holding your thumb in front of you. This is in no sense 'substituted'." No real world involved.

The funny thing about this whole argument...

Take two people. Put them in a room. One person is behind a wall that can change from transparent to opaque.

When the wall is transparent, both can be targeted with spells. Send a command to the wall and it changes to opaque.

Now you can no longer see one person. Only the person not behind the wall can be targeted. This is why spellcasters are often blindfolded (EX: mage masks).

This is all according to the rules.

======

All of you would happily accept that scenario without complaint. Yet some of you would complain because that same scenario is done but with glasses or goggles? Really?!?!

Some of the posts are saying the guy behind the wall cannot be targeted at all because the wall can change to opaque regardless of its transparency because of an electronic overlay that does NOT change/process/re-display the image coming through the material.

Quite. This is what (KarmaInferno?) was talking about with the smart windows (ubiquitous in SR4).

Re-reading the relevant rules, I don't see where it says that "technological visual aids that substitute for the character's visual sense" cannot be present in the character's field of view.

Only that they can't be used to target spells.

So if I have glasses on that use, say, ultrasound to overlay the otherwise unaltered field of view with outlines of targets, I cannot use that ultrasound outline to target spells. However, if I can still see a target with my normal vision, I can target him that way.



-k

You can however use that ultrasound vision to note that someone is walking through the area (invisibly) and decide to cast an Indirect spell, say fireball or hellblast to make the area friendly and inviting

On that note, I seem to recall some fluff that specifically makes use of cameras to help ensure mind-affecting spells are minimized on guards. Checkpoints using cameras so the guards can verify what they see is the same as what the camera sees.

Yes, I know that doesn't help against Physical illusions but they are harder to cast successfully and have a higher drain code.

Yeah, I made that point earlier, KarmaInferno: you're *not* using the Negator to target spells. You're using it to *not* target spells.

This is something that a coding class I had last term pointed out. People have no trouble understanding the positive actions. It's the negatives they have trouble with.

Thus understanding "You can do X except for Y" is easy to grasp. But for many people, trying to understand "You cannot do B except for A" is much harder.

I think that'd be a house rule, Neraph. Else you couldn't target someone with MilSpec (or other total body) armour using your physical senses, which RAW says you can. The aura extends slightly beyond clothing/armour, and that is good enough for targetting a spell either using astral perception or physical senses (i.e. the eyes).

No. You can target a person in MilSpec armor because Magic deals with very vaguely defined ensembles. The aura is never relevant for targeting because it is not a targetable entity. The aura only exists on the astral plane, so it cannot be used for spells cast on the physical plane. On the astral plane it cannot be used either, because anything that has only an aura is not present on the astral plane and thus cannot be targeted by a spell cast on the astral plane.

No they are not. The one are glasses with painted spots the others are glasses with darkend pixels...
Jesus. How can be two things identical, if they are different. What you mean is, they behave the same way in our world if you look through them.
And I tell you, that it does not matter. If the rules restrict anything electronic for targeting, it does not matter, that it would be the same way in the "real" world as a non-electronic device. Unless there is a rule which specially allows it, it is out.

I think we need to remember the part about obscuring vision and replacing vision – and finally using common sense.

A mage with digital display glasses (full 180 degrees display glasses that gives you a HUD would be able to target people clearly because they are designed to viewed through.

A mage whose 180 degree display glasses that have been given a AR digital vision which is essentially a brick wall right in front of him (Wallspace) would NOT be able to target people with magic.

The same apply if his glasses would get a blue screen of death as all he can see is the screen – he would have to remove said glasses to see anything beyond the glasses.

A mage with cybernetic eyes in the older rules could choose optical or digital eyes, the latter were cheaper but essentially stopped him from shooting magic at people as the display was an artificial rendered ‘copy’ of the reality he saw. Display glasses don’t replace the entire view of the world, they can however be made to block it as in the above example.

Now, we will get into a bit of fishy territory in regards to sensors and how they are displayed in HUD display glasses.

Using ultrasound ‘vision’ equipment we cannot target people since we will be given an ultrasound mapping of someone invisible or in full darkness – we could on the other hand argue that the mage should be given a free action to try and spot the target with a small bonus because he knows the SENSOR tells him where the target is but he cannot SEE it – or he can fling a fireball at the approximate location where he knows the target to be.
Even though a mage cannot target something he cannot clearly see with his naked eye he would still know something is there.

We also have the display options with display glasses, especially if they are like our monitors or computer game HUDS –that is, we can manipulate windows and choose how much vision is obscured – a mage could get sensory information from his cybernetic eye radar and unltrasound but simply have a small radar window in his HUD (say, upper right corner) to tell him what he SHOULD see in front of him.
Iit might still be invisible or hidden behind that black plate of glass that he cannot see through but his radar sensor can which means he know someone is there, but cannot target them directly…

If the glass had been partially darkened by pixels it would be like looking through sunglasses and thus not obscured – we might require the mage to make a spotting check to make sure that he actually sees the target.

Finally there seems to be no limit on how much we can actually use cybernetic eyes or glasses with visual aids and flexible HUD displays but a cluttered HUD display can also be a distraction so perhaps a modifier should be used depending on how many sensory aids a character uses at once and displays (Having a X-ray radar vision combined with ultrasound data and a thermographic vision overlay and lowlight all at once might be a bit confusing if used all at once, especially since some of them really DO obscure the target.)

Dude, have you not seen these? You're not looking through a camera, you're looking through a piece of transparent plastic that JUST SO HAPPENS to change color.

It's like you're trying to not understand. Obviously, I was saying they are identical in terms of light reaching the mage's eyes: in both cases, spots are blocked, and nothing more. As opposed to your position (LCD with black spots is 'replacing' his entire visual system).

Irion,

On a set of AR glasses with Negator running, there are transparent areas and blocked areas.

"Substituting" is the complete removal of something and replacing it with something else. Like instead of looking at an apple, I face the opposite direction to look at a computer screen displaying the apple.

The folks who are arguing that you can still cast through Negator glasses at unblocked targets simply do not regard the transparent areas as replacing, editing, or substituting the incoming visual sensory information in those areas in any way, shape or form.

Heck, I could dab a spot of black paint on a pair of non-AR glasses and achieve the same effect. By the rules, I shift my head so the spot covers my teammate, and presto, he's not affected by my direct AoE spell.

Additionally, even having a 'technological aid that substitutes for your visual sense' somewhere in your field of vision, does not completely and totally shut down your ability to target spells at all.

You just can't use that aid to target with. If you are targeting by other means, that is unaffected.



-k

@KarmaInferno
Again, it does not matter.
The image goes through an electronic device. You do not see the picture, you see what the electronic device displays. It does not matter, if you see the same photons. Because the rules do not care about photons.
There are not even rules for "making pixels dark and let others transparent". We do not know how it works in SR...
It is just useless to arguee real world physics if you neither know how the technology works nor magic.

It is obvious to me (from your statement above) that you do not understand SR's rules regarding LOS and spell casting.

Please explain how the electronic device is changing or otherwise re-displaying the image that is coming through the transparent portions of the device (specifically the lens). There is no image processing going on with regards to the original image and what gets to the eyes.

Making the claim "it does not work because the image goes through an electronic device" is a red herring.

The overlay is...
1. NOT receiving the image AND
2. processing undesired targets out AND
3. then re-displaying it.

The overlay is however (from some input) being told what targets are undesirable, which then tells it which transparent pixels to darken. It then darkens those pixels which blocks LOS to the undesired target. The rest of the display is unaffected.

I could see your point if the glasses/goggles were an LED display. That would require the image to be processed and re-displayed. But using goggles or glasses, the lens the user is viewing through is clear/transparent. Thus he can see all available targets without any aid.

All the overlay is doing is selectively painting a blocking pattern over the areas in the field of vision that correspond to undesired targets.

BTW, I can make those optical binoculars electronic simply by putting an LED readout attached to some circuitry. Presto! Instant electronic binoculars and they are still usable for optical targeting because I did NOT change the optics.

By making your baseless claim, you are saying that a mage or any other spell caster CANNOT CAST spells through AR glasses despite them being transparent and allowing the caster to see unaided.

Those AR glasses are electronic after all.

I explained it several times. For the rules it does not matter what the device does. If it alters all or just a part. Rulewise it does not matter. (Or state a rule, which tells a different tale)

I understand, where you are coming from. I disagree with this approch. Not only here but in general. This approach does not really work.
It is used to allow stuff the group likes (which can also be done by housroules). But as soon as you really start following it, it breaks the game. (And therefor is not used by anybody)
So why should I argue it in the first place, if using it is GM-fiat anyway.

This is simply not the case with something like AR glasses. You're describing a computer screen, like an old 90s 'VR' helmet, or this (http://www.sony.co.uk/hub/personal-3d-viewer), which Sony is calling a 'head-mounted display'.

It clearly does matter what the device does, and it matters if it's replacing the whole versus overlaying a part. What breaks the game is *not* allowing this. It causes various problems already mentioned in this thread: no casting through windows, magic-immunity LCD clothing, etc.

One sort of *viable* kluge is the Synner method mentioned earlier: GM-fiat that *intentional* LOS shenanigans fizzle the spell, while non-intentional things don't. This also means, though, that you can't even use your hand, cover/scenery, or anything else to alter your LOS… intentionally. To me, this is a problem, but it's a workable one.

What's not workable is declaring that any LOS that even smells electronic is autofail.

Yes, but no. You can also use Astral Sight to target things on the Physical, so long as you yourself are on the Physical. I'm not talking about projecting and then casting on someone, just Assensing and targetting someone in ruthenium polymers (or other such materials).

Yeah: Dakka Dakka's post contains a generally correct idea, but there are some very misleading errors in the use of some terms (aura, astral form, etc.).

Everyone always has an aura, on any plane. You can target those auras whenever you can a) see them (astral sight), and b) they're a valid target (i.e., when you're *not* breaking the astral-physical barrier).

This means you can target people on the physical *from* the physical (as Neraph said) by looking at their auras (indeed, you have no other choice while Astral Perceiving); it also means you can target people on the astral *from* the astral by their auras (because the astral form and the aura are, AFAIK, coextensive; the aura is what you're actually seeing when you look at an astral form).