| From: | Max Rible <slothman@*********.ORG> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Re: Optional Metatypes, part 3: Sasquatch |
| Date: | Thu, 10 Jul 1997 13:17:16 -0800 |
>Sasquatch characters are limited due to their lack of comprehensible
>speech, but they can use sign language to communicate, and can imitate
>sounds with a high degree of skill.
Here's a piece of gear I came up with a while ago, using some existing
pieces of Shadowrun technology:
* It's easy to get a heads-up display in a pair of goggles.
* Speech recognition is good enough for drones to take spoken commands.
* Sound filtering is very good (as in the Select Sound Filter).
* The problems of defining language programmatically have been solved
well enough to create linguasofts.
The gear is basically a set of glasses or goggles, Sasquatch-sized, with
microphones mounted on the temples. The microphones feed in to a computer
which recognizes separate voices and determines their location. (There
may be an ultrasound device or some other mapping function to help the
computer figure out where people are.) The computer then interprets the
speech, parses it, and does its best to create a translation into
Perkins-Athapascan. It then displays ghostly hands moving in Perkins-
Athapascan sign language, hovering in front of any person who's speaking.
The device will probably be confused by crowds, people with similar vocal
timbres, and bad acoustic environments, but it should make it possible for
the Sasquatch to pick up on what people are saying to a limited degree.
Similarly, if the Sasquatch is wearing datagloves (which could easily be
a fine mesh that lets the Sasquatch's fur through), the computer can take
Perkins-Athapascan input and attempt to produce English output.
--
%% Max Rible %% slothman@*****.com %% http://www.amurgsval.org/~slothman/ %%
%% "So, an Arisian, a Vorlon, and a knnn go into a tavern..." %%
