So, I was reading the rulebook a few minutes ago, and noticed something that got me thinking. On page 229 User Modes>Augmented Reality, it points out that while in Augmented Reality, 'your Persona can go anywhere in the Matrix'. When this happens, obviously your AR view leaves the immediate area, so you wouldn't (in theory) be seeing the icons around you because your persona is on the move (flying up to a Host, etc.). Am I reading this correctly?

Secondly, this topic talks about your AR persona, which begs the question, does just having AR capability automatically mean you have a persona? Example, you use your AR to view passersbys on a busy street. Some schmuck coming towards you has AR glasses (not a decker, or any sort of runner, just a schmuck with AR glasses). Would I be seeing a persona in AR, with all of his equipment icons about his person, or just the person himself, with his icons about his person?

Perhaps a persona comes into AR view the moment the user disengages his/her point of view from their meat body?

Those seem like things that the individual user would be able to configure, not hard and fast settings on a commlink.

If you're accessing a remote location, do you want to still see the AR iconography from your IRL location? Do they automatically minimize and then pop back up when you log off the site? Sounds like a Settings > Options thing to configure.

The second situation is even more complex. Do you want to display your Persona/Avatar to everyone in AR to see while you're walking down the street? Or maybe just have it display just your minimally-required legal info? (Authorities want you to broadcast your SIN, don'tcha know.) But then, other people might effectively override that by configuring their commlinks to display something else other than what you're broadcasting when they see you.

Wouldn't it make sense to just rephrase the sentence 'your Persona can go anywhere in the Matrix' to 'you can search for data anywhere in the Matrix'?

With AR being an overlay on top of a perceived actual physical reality, it strikes me as odd that a user should be able 'detach' from the physical world. That would be a bit like if your conscience jumped into your phone while you were walking down a busy street in today's world, leaving your body standing there like a lifeless husk.

That, to me, is the distinction between AR and VR - VR takes over the senses, AR does not. Therefore, I don't think I'd agree with the interpretation that "your AR view leaves the immediate area". My view is that, with AR, you can send a search query off into the matrix, but _you_ are still sitting on a park bench, eyeing little girls with bad intent.

My semi-officially supported view of accessing the Matrix via AR (as opposed to just watching AROs around you) has always been that you are watching the matrix through an AR display and controlling your persona there via AR controls. So essentially you're doing old-fashioned tortoise access, just with virtual controls instead of a cyberterminal.

This is correct -- with caveats. AR is described as being like a head-up display in, I think, Kill Code. So if you venture to a different part of the Matrix in AR, you could choose to focus on what's visible there by looking at the section of your "screen" that shows the Matrix (the HUD). But you can still shift your focus to the IRL display if you want. See pp.53-5 of SR5 for a decent description.

Think of it like Tony Stark when he's inside his suit. The translucent Matrix feed pops up in front of his eyes when he needs it, but he can dismiss it to go back to the normal view of reality with AROs on top of everything.

But I would also rule you can send a search request off into the Matrix without physically travelling there yourself. This is the sort of thing your commlink can handle/filter for you.

In SR4 and SR5, you also leave data trails. SR4 was clearer about this than SR5, though, as the latter only really talks about data trails in terms of hosts and Foundations (but the fluff implies they still connect other Matrix icons too).

A data trail is like a set of digital footprints that connects your persona's Matrix location to your actual location. But it's also sometimes described like an umbilical that tethers your persona to your real location, representing the link between actual and Matrix positioning.

So even if you're looking at something far away, your persona still leaves a pathway of breadcrumbs that can connect you to your real world location, because that's the place you're "really" located. That's one of the ways GOD can track you IRL, even if your persona is on another continent.


If he's online and not running silently, then yes. If he isn't online, then his persona won't be visible.

As soon as you log onto the Matrix, whether in AR or VR, your device generates a persona. Personas are a prerequisite for engaging with the Matrix -- it's your interface with the digital realm, but it's also a marker that says "here's a person (except when it's a sprite/agent/AI/etc...)".

In AR, any persona you see probably shows up as an overlay on top of the real person, if that person is physically present where you are. Likewise, if you look at a toaster, you'll probably see a little icon hovering on top of that too -- this time indicating that the icon represents a device. In VR, you no longer see meatspace, so the overlay becomes solid and it's the only thing you can see.

Commlinks and cyberdecks filter out most of the icons that are nearby to show you the important stuff. So, personas tend to get prioritised over, say, RFIDs. But technically, AR is a sea of icons, so if you turned off the filters, you'd just see thousands of overlapping icons with all the real stuff obscured behind them.



Let's say you're in AR at the foot of Big Ben. I'm in VR in Times Square. If we see each other in the Matrix without moving physically, we'd both appear just as personas, because neither of us can see the other's meatspace body.

If I was next to you at the foot of Big Ben, you'd be able to see my meatspace body and my persona in AR, so you'd get the overlay, as described above. But if I was still in VR while next to you, I'd still only see your persona because I can't see meatspace at the same time.

In either case, the personas are still there as long as we're both online. It's just that AR is real life with icons on top, and VR is just the icons. A persona is just a fancy icon that can move about like Lara Croft in a Tomb Raider game.

This is all based on my understanding from SR5, with some gaps filled by knowledge of SR4. The best examples for how this works are in the SR5 CRB and Kill Code. Unwired details more stuff from an SR4 perspective, but may still help join some of the dots, even in the Matrix 3.0. SR6 leaves a lot of the detail out, so it's harder to to be sure, but it seems to work on a simplified version of the SR5 model.

Thanks adambeyoncelowe (and everyone who responded). This response makes a lot of sense to me, and fits how I read it pretty closely (just the book didn't cover it clearly enough in my mind). I've done a little more reading on this, bounced this view off a few others I know who play, and read a few older posts online and I haven't seen anything concrete that refutes this. I think I will go with this (and keep an eye out here for more replies...always open to new intrepretations).

Thanks again
Swing Kid