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[lallara zhuul]

Because of the thread about the interactive storytelling lead me to looking into Sleepers and wormholes (never felt the inclination to look into them earlier) the concept of someone dying in wormhole space and having their consciousness transported from there to a cloning facility hit me as odd.

Julianus Soter was helpful and linked me a Fluid Router which lead me to rereading the scientific article about FTL communications.

Which to me clearly states that there is a limit to information that can be transferred through those means. Along the bandwidth capacity of x bytes per second, which would insinuate that the bandwidth is really not that much. Also as an example in the article there is much rejoicing about the first Smiley being transmitted through these means.

To me it would mean that there is no such thing as full VR communications through FTL, just these silly IRC channels that we use in game.
One thing that supports this position is the fact that much of the PF supports the immersionist aspect of EVE so that the UI that us players use to interact with the game would be the same that the characters have access to (even the new Tyrannis video supports it to an extent.)

But then the issue comes to play about the pod death.

In the article about the capsule and the clone there is clearly stated that with the marriage of cloning technology and pod technology the scanners will be able to send the consciousness of an individual at the time of death to the clone at a facility light years away where they will reawaken in a matter of seconds. Which to me seemed a bit implausible because of the fact that the fluid routers were expensive and they were never mentioned in conjunction of the pod technology or even cloning.

Surprisingly reading the article about cloning cleared this thing up.
The gel structure that will become the brain is filled with the quantum particles that are used in the FTL communications and their counterparts are in the brain scanner, in the pod.

That conveniently explains away the problem I had in the first place, but it does not explain away the fact that there are people running around claiming to be in full VR even though their interface with the game is only based on text communications and their imagination.

So my question is as follows, is it a disservice to the world making of New Eden to be breaking the PF about the interface of the capsuleer?
 

[Casiella]

Hm. I need to re-read the article, because The Burning Life clearly describes holographic interfaces used by capsuleers interacting with their agents.

[Havohej]

I think it more a disservice to the player on CCP's part to have this game take place some 25000 years in 'the future' and not have any sort of holographic communication in a sci-fi genre where holo-anything goes hand in hand with 'the future'.

Strictly speaking of RP breaking PF in favor of immersion, I don't think this one in particular hurts anybody and it'll all be moot with the eventual release of Incarna anyway.

[Louella Dougans]

there'd likely be the station transmitters to communicate with agents. Some things may be pre-recorded, also things as to why you have to be in (a) station to communicate fully.

[Casiella]

But what about the proliferation of remote agents (e.g. epic arcs)? And let's not forget space-based agents like at the data centers, COSMOS, etc.

[Louella Dougans]

But what about the proliferation of remote agents (e.g. epic arcs)? And let's not forget space-based agents like at the data centers, COSMOS, etc.

The data centre and cosmos ones, are generally pretty close by, so you could use radio or laser link, or other such lightspeed communications.

The remote agents are an interesting thing though. Hmm.

[Casiella]

Okay I've reread the source article, and I don't see any real problems with the new novel. After all, pilots could have their images stores in a distributed fashion and just transmit emotes or other low bandwidth data that gets rendered for the agent, sort of like today's virtual worlds. Full BE across these links would probably be another matter though, as the OP notes.

[Esna Pitoojee]

There's another way of looking at this, which is that FTL bandwith may have more to do with the processors at either end of the signal than the bandwith itself.

[Casiella]

There's another way of looking at this, which is that FTL bandwith may have more to do with the processors at either end of the signal than the bandwith itself.

Did you read the article? Specifically, the next-to-last paragraph.

[Horatius Caul]

Personally, I'm a purist when it comes to Comms (heh). Yes, a capsuleer can mentally broadcast his voice in his ship (demonstrated in the Jovian Wetgrave), and all communications are essentially electronically-carried telepathy. That said, chat systems are chat systems. I believe that Fluid routers have very slim bandwidths, rendering anything beyond symbol-based chat amazingly expensive and inconvenient. I realize that many roleplayers enjoy broadcasting their holographic images to places, but I find that grating on my view of the PF.

That's me, from here.

I offered this solution as a way to explain holographic avatars running on a low-bandwidth net:

This said... I believe it has been suggested that NEOCOM transmissions can be sent with subtext (such as emotive gradients, voice imprints, etc) that the receiver can use to manufacture a more 'alive' message than pure text. This could then be expanded: A capsuleer sends a 3D avatar to his favourite bar. The bar stores the avatar, and whenever the capsuleer wishes to visit it remotely he can send subtextual cues to the holo-system, allowing it to animate the avatar accordingly. It might be a bit 'uncanny valley' but it might serve for interaction.

[Silver Night]

Maybe they've got *super* good compression, or maybe the tech has advanced since back then?

[Casiella]

What Horatius describes is, in some sense, compression: transmitting smaller amounts of data to represent data whose normal representation requires more bits.

[lallara zhuul]

Your basic ASCII is an 8-bit system, you use 8 binary numbers (corresponding to 1 though 256) to correspond with different letters and symbols.

You don't get much more compressed than that.

In as sense it is what Horatius was talking about, just a lot more simpler.

With 9-bits you could get 512 different symbols, some corresponding to emotes as well.

Voice and visual.

Vent works with 3kb bandwidth per speaker.
Your mp3s usually use around 60 times more, even then it is not as good as analog.
Webcam, 320x480 is 252/512 kbs.

Those two are the easy senses.

[Casiella]

At the individual symbol level, that's true. However, English (and most other Western languages) have very low degrees of entropy, and so text communication generally gets about a 10-to-1 compression ratio.

This is also why most modern web servers will on-the-fly compress pages before sending them to your browser (gzip encoding).

[Silver Night]

Your basic ASCII is an 8-bit system, you use 8 binary numbers (corresponding to 1 though 256) to correspond with different letters and symbols.

You don't get much more compressed than that.

What I mean is, they have the tech to rip the universe a couple different kinds of new space-hole. They might also have tech to do other things we don't know how to do. Magic space handwave, kinda deal.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but a text file can be compressed, can't it?