Who among us has not, at some point or other, wished that they could fly?
Now for most of us, satisfying this urge comes in the form of a plane ticket. However, in the future we have all this wonderful 'ware to play with...

So let's take a look at what kind of modifications you'd need to make a human being able to fly:

1: Bone modification. Normal human bones are too heavy to really be conductive to flight. That means we need to modify them. I'd suggest that we call this a modified version of plastic bone lacing, with the hardened lightweight plastic replacing large sections of the bones in order to reduce their weight.

2: Muscle strength/weight ratio. The fact of the matter is that we'll need a lot of muscle power to get this idea off the ground. Unfortunately, muscle is heavy and just adding more to work the wings cannot end well. Therefore, I suggest a specialized version of muscle replacement, emphasizing strength-weight ratio over just strength.

3: Reinforced torso. Even with both of the above modifications, our winged flight isn't here yet. See, human shoulder blades are not designed stock-standard for carrying you around. Solution? Modified Cybertorso.

4: The wings themselves. Ok, so our bones are lightened, our muscles have been replaced, and we're ready to go right?
Er... not just yet. We still need the wings themselves. Assuming we're going the cyberware route for this our best bet is to call these effectively detachable cyberlimbs, either obvious or synthetic. I think at this point it's reasonable to say that the requisite modifications have already eaten up all the essence you're going to lose out of this, as by this point you're not exactly cutting anything off or out of yourself in order to add them.

Selling all this as a package deal (5th edition prices, using 4th edition cybersuite rules):
Bone-lightening Plastic lacing (+1 armour, unarmed deals physical)
Muscle replacement (ultralight) (+1 strength, +1 agility)
Cybershoulders (Obvious capacity 6, Synthetic capacity 3)
2X cyberwings (obvious capacity 15, synthetic capacity
Cost: 97,200 nuyen, 2.925 essence.

Thoughts?

The requisite wingspan just to achieve a glide would be absolutely enormous. Powered, ornithroptor flight? Freaking gargantuan. Implausibly so.

You might manage it with, say, smaller wings and vectored thrust, but really, if a human wants to fly, he's best off getting an aircraft of some sort. They have Flying Personal Mobility Vehicles in SR4's Arsenal.

The Essence cost looks about right; I'd probably round it up to 3, for simplicity's sake. I would also rule that there is no such thing as a synthetic version. The whole point of synthetic cyberware is that it can pass for natural, or nearly so. You can't make wings on a metahuman look natural. I'm also unsure about the wings having capacity of their own. What, you're going to put a cyberholster in there without compromising aerodynamics?

Considerign that cyberwings are likely to be thin struts, as lightweight actuator as possible and a thin membrane - and that you're already stretching the enveloppe very thin to get a power/weight ration high enough to fly, I'd also rate their capacity at 0.

Basically, the wignspan goes up like weight squared (twice the weight = four times the wingspan) and the wings themselve add weight on a wingspan cubed basis (twice the wingspan, eight times the weight), which means you hit dimnishing returns fairly soon (a bigswan can reach 15 kg with a 2m and some wingspan - a 60 kg metahuman would need 16 times that to reach the same performance. So about 32m of wingspan. With the 'ware's weight included in the overall weight. Better go on a diet, and don't hope to carry more than light clothes and maybe a beltpouch or the like. You're also going to handle like a pig on wet ice. Ubrban flight sounds like a fairly bad idea in heavily build-up areas and low altitudes...)

II'd suggest adding some magic into the mix (won't drive up the already big price tag that much....) to help with the weight and reduce the wingspan to something more manageable.

Look at Gargoyles.
Do you see how big these Wings are?
And they are only good for gliding down, not for flying.
Same with the "flying" squirrel.one half to two thirds or maybe three fourths of a bird are his wings, if he is supposed to be able to actually fly instead of just glide.

I think you have the wings good for decent gliding, plus in a city your wireless connection should help you track and utilize the wind drafts that a city generates to best effect.

But for flying you are going to need some additional thrust probably...

But a better question is what are you doing with them when not paragliding? How much will they retract down to when in storage mode?

If they do not detract much, you are looking at price increase on all your clothing/armours to allow for the wings. You might have a combat vest that basically sits back wards so it closes up under the wings with a flap that comes from the back up over the head (head goes through a hole here and down between the wings, not unlike a harness.

I don't always fly, but when I do, I choose a Winsuit with Booster pack.
Stay Flying my Friends
- The Most Interesting Mercenary in the world.

This, basically. I can see cybernetic wings having niche appeal for extreme-sports enthusiasts, but really, there are far cheaper and less attention-getting solutions for runners that give basically the same capability.

I think the bone lacing would need to be altered. The entire reason it gives armor rating and physical damage is because it is heavier and stronger than the regular bone. By trying to gain the regular benefits, and have it lightweight as well, you are essentially trying to get more from the same piece of gear than the base gear gives. Seems reasonable using unnatural materials to allow the lightened bones without a penalty though.

Also, with modified shoulders/torso cyberlimbs, the muscle replacement does nothing for helping you fly. Cyberlimbs replace the stats with their own, so with the cybershoulders you just need to add the str/agi increases with their capacity instead.

For simplicity, and possibly ease of use, it might be better to just go with a full cybertorso, and include the internal storage compartments for the wings to fold into. While getting a high str/agi cyber-torso is pretty rare, this is one of the few instances that would seem to make good use of it.

I'm going to assume that the 'detachable' part on the wings got overlooked at this point.

The muscle replacement was picked up to replace normal muscle across the body with a light weight variant. It's a weight-saving measure. also, those of you who've done the math will realize that I used the price and essence cost of muscle replacement 2 but gave the benefits of 1 to represent the focus on reduced weight.
The bone lacing I listed doesn't give full benefits. I dropped the bonus to body and reduced the increase in unarmed damage if you want the specifics.

The whole Obvious/Synthetic thing was more along the lines of Obvious=artificial appearence, Synthetic=bird/bat/other living creature appearance.

Not sure about the whole cybertorso idea, might toy with it a bit.

You should also cut off your legs to save weight.

Good idea. Do they still make those skimmer disks?

You want to fly in Shadowrun... Magic, 'nuff said.

A mage can create a specific flight spell to give him extra speed over a regular levitate spell without having to call on the services of a spirit.

yeah, but anything magic can do tech can do better. (Planes are faster and can carry more people than levitate, ditto helicopters.) I'm just trying to scale down.

The most important question, though...

Can this be mounted on bears?





-k

Don't know about cyber, but I was on a little smuggling run with a few pals over/through the Tsimshian Nation when we ran afoul of some flying bears with FRAKKING LASARS coming out of their eyes.

This snapshot was the last image we got off one of our drones before it was taken out as well, that smoke in back is our trio of downed T-birds. That was a good week of ducking patrols to get back to civilization.

I think some of those reports of planes being downed by bad weather in that area may well have another reason the authorities are not sharing.

Now I don't know if they if they were awakened/mutant/warforged/chimera genesplice job or some kind of combat drones dressed up as a winged bear, but I won't fly be flying those backwoods again without some serious support.

Awakened. Those don't have nearly enough wingspan to fly physically, and no combat drone is gonna be able to catch and kill T-Birds wearing a winged grizzly costume.

Some dumb motherfucker has bred a breed of bear that flies like a pixie with a jet engine up its ass, and has the Laser spell inherently. Ghost help us all if it has Movement, too, which I suspect it did, if they caught and killed T-Birds who had drone support and presumably non-standard modifications of the air-to-air sort.

Tech in SR does better than magic when it comes to quantity.
When it comes to quality, such as personal flight, Magic is still your go to tool . .

For now. I'm working on fixing that.