[bangbangtequila]

You know, there's a clever idea for an AR program. Clear contacts, allowing natural vision, but have them censor your allies with a digital simulacrum. Your vision would be functionally identical, but your AoE spells wouldn't affect your allies since you wouldn't have non-technological line of sight. Why waste dice and a metamagic? This would comparably difficult to the drumpfinator add-on to google chrome.

[Herr Brackhaus]

Wouldn't that still be digitally enhanced vision? You'd need something like an imagelink in the contacts to edit out your allies, and I'd argue that that cannot be applied only to the ally.

Plus, you wouldn't know where your allies are. That could be possibly dangerous

[Reaver]

best advice?

Don't get cute with thinking like that bangbang....



Pianos happen to character that think like that. Repeatedly.





<GM: "your character is walking down the street. A piano falls on you. Resist 300p damage. Can't? your dead. Make a new character">
<GM: "this is your new character? Cool. A piano falls on this one too. Resist 300p damage. What is up with you and Pianos??? Make a new character.">
 

[bangbangtequila]

@Herr: Come on. We can currently have black bars auto-cover breasts with a what, 1 second delay on live TV? And google reverse image search recognizes actors from any picture and pulls up similar ones with surprising accuracy.  Now apply the computing power of shadowrun and tell me that you couldn't have a simple image/smartlinked set of contacts overly an AR icon that mirrors what your allies are doing, allowing you to have functionally normal vision, except you wouldn't have true line of sight because when it came to your pre-programmed allies they would just be real-time video. This is a really simple, but ingenious way to allow people to use AoE mana-spells. Wouldn't help with AoE indirect spells though.

@Reaver: That is what I like to refer to as "lazy" and would reflect poorly on the GM, I think. I'm not metagaming with this solution. This is based on the in-game mechanics and existing tech. The universe recognizes that mana cannot be shaped by electronic image, or they wouldn't have mage-sight goggles. Why is it hard to believe that corporate security forces would try to develop a safe-target system for their magicians? It seems like a logically consistent train of thought with in game thinking and an almost painfully obvious reason for it to have been developed.

That's not to say anyone has to allow it. But you're so much better off having someone throw a chaff grenade and totally scrambling the too-simple program to mess up the AR, or even better, veto-ing it OOC before they try to use it. Punishing a player for ingenuity creates a sterile game.

[Herr Brackhaus]

I stand by my assertation that viewing through contacts would be a no-go.

Any technological visual aid that digitizes or augments the visual input for you (a camera, electronic binoculars, Matrix feeds, etc.) doesn’t work—you’re looking at a generated image, not the light from the real target.

You don't get to bypass this requirement by, as Reaver puts it, trying to be cute. You're either looking at a digitized image that allows you to hide your allies from you but precludes you from casting spells, or vice versa.

ETA
Essentially, you are arguing that you could overlay an image only on the affected area (i.e. your ally). I'm arguing that your analogy is broken, first of all, because the black bars we use today are overlaid on an electronic image projected onto your natural eyes, and do not edit out part of your real life vision. Secondly, I'm arguing that all the processing power in the world isn't going to help you, because you need to take the feed from something (a camera) and then overlay it on your image linked contacts, which means you're looking at a digital image. Even if you allowed that base functionality, you'd still need to take a complex action each Combat Turn to maintain the editing...

So yeah, no.

[bangbangtequila]

Sigh**
Read the post. You have clear contacts, similar to a holographic sight that isn't powered. It is just glass. It wouldn't make sense for all contact lenses to be a camera and screen, which is what you would need for the entire field of vision to be electronic.

You use an AR overlay over JUST your allies. The remainder of your vision would be unaltered, natural vision. Pretty simple, and would just be a relatively simple program utilizing only an image link.

Meh. I found it interesting as a thought experiment. I'm not interested in debating it if you're all going to preclude the possibility because "it's cute"

[Herr Brackhaus]

I read your post, and I disagree with your solution on a fundamental level. If all you're doing according to you is overlaying an AR field, you don't need the glasses. You already have your imagelink somewhere else. I also never suggested the contacts were the camera and screen, just the screen.

And this isn't a debate

[bangbangtequila]

See, your edit is a constructive argument more in line with what I've seen elsewhere, thanks for taking the time.

Fair enough then. I see contacts or glasses as a transparent surface, with projected images overlapping the natural light to provide AR. Only the augmented images would be anything other than natural light. Hence, in my interpretation of the technology (over which my limited background in physics and engineering leads me to think of as the most efficient), my program and system makes sense. I suppose in any interpretation, it would still be possible, at least in the game universe, though I can see why you would want to simplify the rules to either you're using glasses or you're not.

I've postulated enough I think. Anyone can feel free to run with it if they want.

[Sendaz]

So what if I hire a lot of mooks to run out into the battlefield tailing the rest of the team while carrying big black boards which they position between me and my allies so I do not have direct LOS to my teammates?

Hey, is that a piano?

[Rosa]

See, your edit is a constructive argument more in line with what I've seen elsewhere, thanks for taking the time.

Fair enough then. I see contacts or glasses as a transparent surface, with projected images overlapping the natural light to provide AR. Only the augmented images would be anything other than natural light. Hence, in my interpretation of the technology (over which my limited background in physics and engineering leads me to think of as the most efficient), my program and system makes sense. I suppose in any interpretation, it would still be possible, at least in the game universe, though I can see why you would want to simplify the rules to either you're using glasses or you're not.

I've postulated enough I think. Anyone can feel free to run with it if they want.

The main reason this wouldn't Work is that people don't just stand still in combat. You said it yourself earlier when you talked about the Black bars on tv, they have a what? 1 second delay, well thats fine for TV as noone really thinks anything of live tv being delayed by a second, but in SR combat a one second delay in having the images readjust for friend and foe movement would either mean that the mage stand around and do nothing or that you seriously risk hitting unintended targets and missing intended ones due to this delay. You have to remember that while the game splits actions and movement into turns and phases, thats a game feature in order to make sense of something that is continous and ongoing all the time, so if there was even only half a second delay, they would be pretty useless in most combats as they show you, not actual reality, but reality as it was x amount of time ago.

[Darzil]

And that's why they need to be wireless getting matrix power to assist, and can thus be hacked . . .