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Kyuhan
In the flavour text it says move-by-wire is based on similar systems used for vehicle and aircraft maneuverability, does anybody know if there's really systems like this on planes and such?
Penta
Yep. Planes have had fly-by-wire systems for about 30 years now, on military and civil aircraft.
Kyuhan
Cool, thanks. smile.gif
Cray74
Tests of fly-by-wire by NASA:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/history...astprojects/F8/

Now airliners have it:
http://www.airbus.com/media/fly_by.asp
Crimsondude 2.0
Yes, there are. However, they work entirely differently than MBW does and, for all intents and purposes, should not even use the same terminology IMO.

If MBW worked like FBW does, they wouldn't need to put your brain into a constant seizure that can never be stopped. I have no doubt that it's nothing more than some BS attempt at "game balance" or some such nonsense.

Oh, in SR there is also Drive-by-Wire for your vehicle.
Gambitt
Aye heres the european bad boy. Without fly by wire its just a dead stick.

http://www.eurofighter.starstreak.net/Euro...flight-sys.html
Slacker
I've also seen a real-life car with Drive-by-Wire. It was just a prototype, but that was 3 or 4 years ago if I remember correctly. Can't recal who made it though.
Crimsondude 2.0
This car?

Just quoting a post already made be myself a month ago.
QUOTE (Crimsondude 2.0)
QUOTE (Ancient History @ Apr 16 2005, 11:51 AM)
Your average person won't have a lot of cyberware.

That sounds like a profound statement of the blindingly obvious, but consider it for a moment. For an average household, a piece of completely legal cyberware can consume most of the yearly budget, even on an installment plan.

Well, this actually came up the other day when I took a look at the description of MBW again and called major bullshit.

Fly-by-Wires doesn't work in any way like MBW does. If MBW actually was based on the technology of FBW, then it would be most useful and appropriate for people who are walking tanks because it would require separate computers for each limb (plus the head and torso) keeping them in "spaz" mode while the main computer in the brain was the central hub making sure that each of the limbs didn't do the walking equivalent of "flying apart." For people without cyberlimbs, the essence cost might be somewhere near as hellacious as it is for MBW, but... There is no logical reason whatsoever for it to keep the brain in a constant seizure mode (or for it to not be turned on and off, for that matter). What it should do is interfere with the neural connections between the limbs and the brain, and be used in civilian capacities (i.e., the very low-essence version that provides no benefits) to compensate for someone who has suffered a catastrophic spinal injury. Kind of like the French device and technology in prototype mode I happened to catch on a rerun of Ripley's last night, coincidentally.

...

The "very low-essence" tech being, for all intents and purposes, MBW 0.
Req
IRL: far as I know, fly-by-wire just means replacing the old-skool hydraulic actuators on your flight controls with electric motors, and parsing the commands to activate them through a computer of some sort. It's my belief that the Move-By-Wire writers read an article about the F-117A Nighthawk (the "Stealth fighter") and about how it's inherently unstable due to its amazingly screwed-up-lookin' airframe, and how it is made to fly by offloading a lot of the flight-control tasks to the fly-by-wire computer. The instability is not an artifact of fly-by-wire system, but the fly-by-wire system does serve to counteract the plane's instability.

There are plenty of aircraft using fly-by-wire systems (I believe the most modern versions of the F/A-18 do) that are nicely aerodynamic airframes, capable of being operated safely without the computer in the loop.

(as always: I might be on crack, here, but this is what I think I remember...)
Crimsondude 2.0
Indeed. It's only the rare case of the F-117 or X-37 where FBW becomes necessary. But as you said yourself, the FBW does not create the instability. It controls the inherent instability. And I can't see how it should be termed an X-by-Wires system if it doesn't operate like FBW does, which is to control the actual surfaces and route them all together and then hook it up to the control system. MBW is just stupid, and I don't see the point of using it the way it's written.
Rev
Going with the flavor text the idea would be to somehow modify a persons nervous system such that it could react quicker, but was less stable, then use other hardware to actively damp the instabilities. This would be analogous to the way fly by wire systems allow airplane designers to design planes that are instable, but still flyable because the computer can translate the pilots simple fairly linear commands into complex non-liniar changes to the various physical flight controls.

This is actually a fairly robust analogy for what is basically marketing.
scoundrel
For idiots like me, the flavor text for Move-By-Wire makes perfect sense. smile.gif
Crimsondude 2.0
QUOTE (Rev)
Going with the flavor text the idea would be to somehow modify a persons nervous system such that it could react quicker, but was less stable, then use other hardware to actively damp the instabilities. This would be analogous to the way fly by wire systems allow airplane designers to design planes that are instable, but still flyable because the computer can translate the pilots simple fairly linear commands into complex non-liniar changes to the various physical flight controls.

But there is no logical reason why any part of that design should include the part about being put into a continuous seizure. Nor does it make any sense for one to never be able to turn it off.
Cynic project
Now I could be wrong but I thought that the reason that the fly by wire and move by wire system really worked under the idea, that the fastest way something move is to always be moving. You take a body or plane and make it try to go 360 on it's X,Y, and Z axis. Then you stop it from moving in any way. So you have an object that wants to move everywhere, but is not. Then when you want movement you stop, stoping the obect.

It is a lot like a rubber band. You can pull it back and fire at something or have it held taught and aimed at something. What rubber band will it the target first? The one you have to pull back and then let go, or the one you just let go?

The human muslce's fastest form of movement is a spasm or sizure. So by making the body basiclly into a controled one you have a body that can move faster than than any other human.

What i don't get is why the movemnt is graceful. I would see more as being machine like, as a computer is telling yrou body just how to move, at every level.
mfb
yes. that's the part that makes sense. the part that doesn't make sense is why they need to put the brain in a state of permanent seizure to achieve this.
hobgoblin
your brain is still telling your body where to go. its only that now the info travels down a wire, rather then neurons for most of its time.

basicly the mbw system spends most of its time intercepting or counteracting the spasms so that it becomes nothing more then a a small shaking at worst. but when you decide to move in some direction the mbw is able to allow for spasms that are allready trying to move your body in that direction to actualy have an effect. ie, the movement command have allready been sendt, what your realy doing is allowing it to happen nyahnyah.gif

and i dont think its on/off like, more like a gradual dampening of the signal so that you end up where your aiming.

the medical problem most likely comes from the machinegun like movement center you need for this to work. maybe it burns out?
SpasticTeapot
I personally think that MBW should be replaced with a synthetic cerebellum option. By replacing most of the bit of your brain that controls movement and other lower functions, reaction times could be improved a LOT. Of course, this would still need a wired reflexes style set of fiber optics to directly control the muscles, but links to things like the adrenal gland would not be needed, and because most of the links are to the metal bits already installed in your head, essence cost would'nt be that much higher than conventional systems..
Rev
QUOTE (Crimsondude 2.0)
QUOTE (Rev @ May 17 2005, 12:30 PM)
Going with the flavor text...

But there is no logical reason why any part of that design should include the part about being put into a continuous seizure. Nor does it make any sense for one to never be able to turn it off.

A less stable nervous system could be more prone to seizures even to the point where without the other parts of the system damping its fluctuations it would immediately go into full seizure. The modifications needed to make the nervous system less stable & faster reacting could be difficult or very slow to reverse making it impracticle to switch it on and off. Might have been better to say the brain is constantly on the edge of seizure or something, but then the flavor text doesn't sound like some research report on how the thing works but a brief description by a knowledgable person so if it makes you feel better you can certainly change it around that much in your head.

I think it makes as much sense as most peices of cyberware. Really shadowtech was a well researched book. The stuff in there is pretty plausible as science fiction goes.
Crimsondude 2.0
QUOTE (hobgoblin @ May 17 2005, 05:06 PM)
your brain is still telling your body where to go. its only that now the info travels down a wire, rather then neurons for most of its time.

Yeah, but for the most part Wired Reflexes does the same thing.

It, however, doesn't require its user to be in a constant, unending seizure for the rest of their lifetime, or the lifetime of the 'ware.

QUOTE (Rev)
Might have been better to say the brain is constantly on the edge of seizure or something, but then the flavor text doesn't sound like some research report on how the thing works but a brief description by a knowledgable person so if it makes you feel better you can certainly change it around that much in your head.

Oh, I know I can change it. The problem is that by removing that critical aspect of the description, you eliminate all of the rules that go with it with regards to the drawbacks (specifically to TLE-x).

But I don't see how it couldn't be done more simply by routing all peripheral neural controls through a set of redundant computers which themselves stimulate the nervous systems in said peripheral appendages, and those route to the central neural processor in the brain which controls how those limbs, each spazzing on their own, interact as a whole.
Rev
Don't remember exactly the wording on the drawbacks, but they had basically to do with the person going into full seizures & soforth, so if the brain was constantly on the edge of seizure or even having sort of micro seizures the mbw was squelching the side effects would be just as reasonable as they were before. The nervous system modifications aren't very stable and tend to drift toward seizures that the hardware cannot damp requiring surgical correction.

There must be many more or less plausible explinations, but MBW already has one of the better detailed explinations in shadowrun.

Personally I like that shadowtech went to all the extra work of figuring out explinations for a lot of this stuff. It makes good adventure hooks and roleplaying fodder.

Crimsondude 2.0
That is pretty much what the description says. It works fine within that context. The way it's described, TLE-x is a perfectly logical drawback of having that thing installed. The description makes sense in a twisted sort of way. Calling it Move-by-Wires and suggesting it's the same thing as Fly-by-Wires is disingenuous, but the same principles hold if you stretch the example (you have to stretch it until it nealry snaps, but still).

So, to answer the original question: Yes, there are such things.


My point, my digression really, was that there's a better way to do it. I don't like the mechanic. I think it's grossly unnecessary and about as logical as setting someone on fire to get them to run faster. A system calling itself MBW could work better, and could do the same things without requiring the user to be in constant seizure.

I could house rule it, but I don't like house rules. If I did, there wouldn't be a problem. MBW would work entirely different and would not instill the same drawbacks (namely, TLE-x). It would have the same problem Wired Reflexes do when activated, only it'd be harder to stop them. Likewise, MBW would be made with cyberlimbs in mind first and not require the insane essence costs in them. Nor would Wired, and it annoys me that you don't get the discount when you have 4 cyberlimbs and aren't wiring the peripheral nervous system but insteading simply connecting wires. But that's for another day.

However, since I don't like house rules and I don't plan on adding any unless I can't help it it's moot.
Lindt
Actually a number of cars have a drive-by-wire esk system in place. New Corvette for example, you tell the computer with to do, and it does it according to what it thinks is right, not nessecarrly what you tell it.

The fly by wire system is becomming a nessectity in fighter planes, mostly because the more naturally unstable the airframe, the more responsive it is, and the faster it can turn.
hobgoblin
crimsondude, isnt MBW wired reflexes+ ?
Crimsondude 2.0
Not to my knowledge. They work on entirely different principles.

Wired Reflexes are exactly that, composed of "neural boosters and andrenaline stimulators" (SR3, 301). MBW is a computer system that interacts directly with the brain and central nervous system, but does not include the pervasive replacement or augmentation of the peripheral nervous system in its description. In M&M and CT, it's described simply as an expert computer interfacing with the brain.
hobgoblin
heh figures.

still, flavor texts have a bad habbit of never being 100% correct. most of the time i boil it down to: cost: x essence, benefit: something or other. and then look for any incompatibilitys and side effects. how it works may well be small gnomes behind your ear as long as it fits the setting.
Crimsondude 2.0
I still think of it in the context of its unveiling in Cybertechnology and the image of this hideously large thing being attached to the cerebellum, and that looks like it actually replaces part of the spinal cord.
hobgoblin
well i must say that i have never seen said image (joind the SR cult around the end of SR2).

but then again, artists have allways had a bit of room to move...
Mortax
QUOTE (hobgoblin @ May 18 2005, 01:28 PM)
still, flavor texts have a bad habbit of never being 100% correct.

You said it. Also, do remember that as originally posted in cybertechnology, the post was made by hatchetman. He should not be taken as an expert on the scientific principles behind cyberware, but only their application.

Edit: Also, he was kinda dopped up at the time, what with being in a vat so he didn't die and being preeped for cybermancy.
Crusher Bob
One of the things fly by wire helps compensate for is the different air flows over an aircraft in different flight 'stances'. The ideal shape for subsonic flight is diffirent from the ideal shape from supersonic flight, so before fly be wire, an aircraft shape was always a compromise of various aerodynamic shapes. The fly by wire system allows you to design a more ideal shape and then use the 'gross' flight control surfaces produce and imrpoved shape depending on your current flight 'stance'.

Also, it allows you to have more complex flight surfaces, but still have the controls the pilot manipulates be simple. (Imagine a car with a seperate steering mechanism for each wheel, sure it would handle really well, but only if your dirver could manage all 4 wheels at once. Having a computer be the thing that actually decides how to move each of the 4 wheels, while giving the driver only one wheel.)

Anti lock brakes and automatic traction control systems present in many cars today could be called 'drive by wire systems' in that they do not directly translate the input of the driver into what the controls do. So even if the driver provides control inputs which should lock the brakes, the computer which really controls what the brake pads do won't allow the brakes to lock up...

----

You can see an effect that might be though of as 'move by wire' when you train for certain activities over and over again, in that you do not have to 'think' about exactly which muslces to move to accomplish your goal. We'll take kicking people in the head as an example: as you practice your boot to the head for a long time, you no longer have to think of the intermediate steps, you just start 'boot to the head' and your whole body moves... Also, you don't have to think 'exactly' about how high to kick based on where your target is, the 'practice' parts of your brain compensate for that without any conscious thought.
Crusher Bob
Breaking up my post into two posts... well, just because.

This is one of the reaons I really dislike the 'twitcyness' of wired reflexes, in that they assume that everyone's reactions are the same, so someone who got wired reflexes to play a better game of basketball still wants to flip out and kill people when you startle them, not take the ball away from you...

Here's a rough system I though up a while ago to try to represent 'trained reflexes':

Speed Knack (1 point edge?)
There is an action you have trained for over and over again.
You must describe both the action and the 'triggers' for this action.
Any time the trigger for the action is met, you get +10 to your initiative total, but your first action must be to preform the 'programmed action'. If you wish to avoid doing the action, make a willpower (6) test. If you succed, you don't have to do the programmed action, but don't get the bonus speed.

Sample Speed Knack:
Drop prone whenever I hear something that sounds like a gunshot or explosion.

So when our hero is ambushed, he would get +10 to his init total, with his first action being dropping prone. If he wanted to not drop prone, he'd have to make a willpower test to do something else...

This helps demonstrate why almost no one trains 'automatic' offensive actions while everyone trained defensive ones. If a car backfires and you drop prone, it's just a bit embarrasing. If car backfires and you start shooting people, well that's bad.

If you have someone crazy enough to train an offensive action, they'll be faster, but they'll tend to get into trouble becuase of it.

This gives 'control' back to the players, in that you can have one of the basically required pieces of ware (reflex enhancement) without needing to flip out and kill people. But if you want, you can go faster, just with some risks...
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