I was wondering how everyone else works elementa manipulations. From what I gather directly from the text a fireball would fill an area with a radius of Magic rating in meters. Now having this ball of flame just appear out of no where kind of goes against my mental image of an exploding ball of flames. If someone is in a hall way that is 2 Meters wide, does the fire ball appear on the other side of the wall at the same time, when cast? Or do you say it has to destroy the wall as a barrier to explode over? I saw something in another post about using combat pool to cast elemental manipulations, do many of you allow that? Also how do you work the target numbers for casting, do you apply vision mods, cover and other ranged combat modifiers, even to the balls spells?

No, Elemental Manipulations are "launched" from the magician and have to travel through physical space to get to their target. Area Effect EMs "explode" once they hit their destination whereas single-serving EMs just hit their target. If an obstacle is in the way (say a window), it has to blast through that obstacle in order to continue on its path.

I do allow Combat Pool (in an either-or scenario; either Combat Pool or Spell Pool, not both) when casting EMs, CP is allowed for Spell Resistance Tests, and all ranged combat modifiers apply to the base TN of 4.

I treat area effect Elemental Manipulations in the same manner as a grenade only without scatter. The caster can use any dice from Combat Pool and Spell Pool so long as the total pool dice does not exceed the Sorcery dice used.

Hey Doc, I always saw it that way in my mind. What about a F3 Deadly fireball being tossed at someone on the other side of a window, with the low power, they probably would not destroy the window, that seems kind of weird to me, what do you think?

SR's barrier rules make no sense, whether you combine them with magic or not.

While I'm not a fan of the Barrier rules either, the F3 Fireball is a fairly easy one to handle. Glass tends to resist heat alot better than metahuman flesh does, afterall, plus the secondary effects (with a hefty bonus since it was at Deadly) might just work at destroying the window, too, since at that point it becomes an OR test rather than Barrier Rating test. My memory may be off, though. We use a lot of house rules and I get 'em confused sometimes.