| From: | Max Rible <slothman@*********.ORG> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Re: thermographic vision-question |
| Date: | Tue, 2 Feb 1999 12:00:28 -0800 |
>O.K. Surely you guys/and gals on this list, can help me. I have this
>player in the group who sees thermographic vision as the ultimate
>solution to perception tests. He states that with thermographic
>vision you can see nearly (through) everything. I think he's
>mistaking it for IR-vision, but I can't get that in his head.
>
>Could someone please post a mail explaining what thermographic vision
>is, and how it works. Preferably long, with lot's of difficult words
>in it (his English isn't that good:)).
Thermographic vision is IR vision. Seeing into the IR far enough
to spot body heat is basically magical: the problem is equivalent
to taking pictures with a camera whose metal is glowing.
It seems to me that thermographic vision is just an extra cone
that picks up where the red one leaves off and covers the IR
down to the range where room-temperature bodies emit. (There's a
bit in one of the Denizens of Earthdawn books that mentions that
the races that have thermographic vision have three extra colors
in their rainbow.)
It does make it easy to see where people have applied makeup that
might be invisible to ordinary sight; it will alter the pattern
of radiation of heat, and will seldom be designed to have the same
IR reflective characteristics as skin.
As far as I know, most substances are not transparent to IR. A
corp that wanted to make life difficult for folks with IR
could make the walls of their building radiate at the same temperature
as the guards; the guards would then have camouflage bonuses to negate
any advantages that go with someone seeing into the IR.
Give the player the bonuses on the Perception table and make him
bring in articles from reputable journals like Scientific American
to convince you of anything more.
--
%% Max Rible %%% max@********.com %%% http://www.amurgsval.org/~slothman/ %%
%% "Ham is good... Glowing *tattooed* ham is *bad*!" - the Tick %%
