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Original post by Kaze Laser can be beliveable but try to stay away from the generic sci-fi pistol that makes corny sound effects and shoot a green blob that travals about 25Km/h

That sounds more like a plasma pistol. Laser pistols usually shoot blue line blobs.

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Original post by Oluseyi Quote: Original post by T1Oracle 1) Computers may... a. Likely be evolve to use hand gesture systems (I think Minority Report used this concept, I never saw the movie) using either gloves or a remote motion sensor (both are plausible) Implausible. Unless people generally start to communicate using hand gestures, or these are very simple gestures, people will not adopt a unique system of communication just for interacting with machines.

Isn't that how the mouse came to be? Personally, I think a direct neural interface would be better. It doesn't have to plug into your head. Maybe through retina scanning or some headphones-like gadget?

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Original post by Oluseyi Quote: Original post by T1Oracle 1) Computers may... a. Likely be evolve to use hand gesture systems (I think Minority Report used this concept, I never saw the movie) using either gloves or a remote motion sensor (both are plausible) Implausible. Unless people generally start to communicate using hand gestures, or these are very simple gestures, people will not adopt a unique system of communication just for interacting with machines.

They already have. How many people use a keyboard to communicate with anything but a computer?

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Quote: b. Use voice recognition, we already have it but it is rarely portrayed in sci-fi Voice recognition is portrayed in the overwhelming majority of futuristic sci-fi. Quote: c. Rely on wireless everything. No one likes cables and we are already moving in that direction. 1966, Star Trek. Tricorder. Quote: d. Display on floating screens and VR glasses that look like ordinary glasses. Again we are already developing this technology. 1977, Star Wars. Hologram. Earlier citations may exist. Quote: e. Stop using disks, disks are probably going the way of the dinosaur with USB drives replacing them. I suggest wireless drives both long and short range. For security reasons you may use a very close range (1 inch from reader) system instead. The nature of storage is immaterial, but it will likely be solid state for greater stability. Quote: 2) Guns should... a. Likely still use bullets. Bullets are cheap and effective plus there are technologies in the works that promise to make recoil negligable. Bullets require shell casings, individual manufacture, transportation (they're bulky)... Pellets are an interesting alternative, where the gun essentially accelerates a tiny pellet to stun/lethal velocity. Because of reduced size, a single weapon carries a few orders of magnitude more ordinance.

The problem with pellet guns is that they need a seperate power source, and bullets contain thier own power source. Individual manufacture is not a problem, even in todays world, as mass production has existed for roughly two centuries.

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That said, the notion of "pure energy" weapons is not implausible for the distant future. Quote: b. Support more than one type of ammo for the sake of variety in tactics, we already have this. Also "Metal Storm" technology may allow a gun to use different ammo without requiring a magazine change; you just fire from a different barrel. (Google it) More notably, shotgun ammo already comes in many interesting varieties that I haven't ever seen in games (like pellets that are strung together so they can wrap around things and cut them off). AD 2000. LawGiver 2000. [smile] Quote: c. Use OICW technology. This gun already exists, so why don't sci-fi grenade launchers allow you to change the fuse type on the round? You should have ranged, impact, delay, and proximity (not on OICW) fuses that can be set before the grenade leaves the barrel. How often do you see grenades in sci-fi? Quote: b. Use lasers that make sense. Overheat and run out of ammo, gas lasers can run out of ammo. Lasers don't have to be "God" weapons. Tomorrow's lasers don't have to work like today's. Sci-fi is always about an extrapolation of the current, and it is not illogical to conceive of a time when a.) the laser apparatus is reduced in size, and with it its energy consumption and heat generation, and b.) this enables lasers to effectively function indefinitely.

One of the problems with lasers is that they tned to block themselves when used on a soft target. Flesh vaporizes, and the cloud of vapor reflects, refracts or absorbs the laser. This is not so much a problem, as simply pulsing the laser solves that problem by giving time for the vapor to dissipate

I've noticed that most worlds that have laser weapons don't deal with the awful smell of burning flesh...

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Quote: 3) Security needs to... a. Use common sense. Breaking into the building should require remote and onsite hacking along with an insider aid. Futhermore guns pods are lame, just seal off the door and gas them. I think that's a tad narrow. You have to look at the other cardinal assumptions of the specific sci-fi universe. For example, in a world where surveillance is the norm, it is not implausible that your doors can be remotely activated by a supervisor with the appropriate authority, and that the ultimate hub of authority is a single central nexus. Now, if you can compromise that hub, or even just a main artery, then you can override security on several branch connections. For instance, in Spielberg's film adaptation of Minority Report, the cars on the freeway were controlled by a central computer and their local systems could be completely overridden as a means of apprehending the suspect - so Cruise's character had to kick the window out and jump off the roof of the car.

I concur. What it takes to break into something really depends on the security model of the world. In a frontier world, where security is less important, there will be no infrastructure for you to pwn, so you have to do it the hard way.

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Quote: 4) Technology in general must... a. Break occasionally. Think of this as emmotional common ground. Every gamer (or person in this modern world) can relate to things breaking or not working correctly. I think sci-fi that breaks could at least provide some humor. Relating to the player's basic senses aids in suspension of disbelief. Meh. Certain technologies, after sufficient refinement, are effectively stable. A well-manufacturerd knife may never fail over its lifespan, and may have a self-sharpening sheath. Yet a few centuries ago, knives failed - they became dull, they broke, they fell apart. It is not inconceivable that process refinements and design simplifications can make certain technologies durable to the point of near-guaranteed function. Where failures tend to occur are with newer technologies. That said, do players/viewers really care that technology in the future never fails? The real question is whether having technology fail serves the narrative/interactive interest of your world. If not, leave it out.

I think that players don't really care if breakage is absent, but if present, it can add a whole new level of immersivity. I liked the lightswitches in Duke Nukem 3d.

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I'm not just trying to disagree with you. I think you don't give enough credit to existing/prior sci-fi works; only in the last decade and a half has sci-fi really begun to suffer because of its ascendancy as a reliable "blockbuster" genre. Until that happened, sci-fi works tended to be more thoughtful about their complete world and thus more intriguing to the scientifically inclined. The influx of box office bucks gave us garbage like Will Smith's I, Robot travesty, but such films are by no means representative of the genre.

Unfortunately, capitalism, especially of the Hollywood variety, tends to have this effect on alot of things. Lower the quality and raising the price, untill noone will put up with it anymore...

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In any case, I tend to prefer the books. *gazes lovingly at his 14 Foundation and Empire novels...*

;D

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Original post by NIm Quote: Original post by Oluseyi Quote: 2) Guns should... a. Likely still use bullets. Bullets are cheap and effective plus there are technologies in the works that promise to make recoil negligable. Bullets require shell casings, individual manufacture, transportation (they're bulky)... Pellets are an interesting alternative, where the gun essentially accelerates a tiny pellet to stun/lethal velocity. Because of reduced size, a single weapon carries a few orders of magnitude more ordinance. The problem with pellet guns is that they need a seperate power source, and bullets contain thier own power source. Individual manufacture is not a problem, even in todays world, as mass production has existed for roughly two centuries.

The pellet system allows for one very huge step forward. The bullets can be manufactured in the weapon. They could be given any shape and combined with any other materials before being fired off. That means all weapons have compatible ammo, and that AP, HP, and FMJ are just a button click away.

Just a note, but a bullet actually is equivalent to a pellet. The combination of a bullet, case, gunpowder and primer is a cartridge.

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Original post by Roboguy Quote: Original post by Ezbez Alternate dimensions that you can travel to is unbelievable to me. You mean alternate universes or traveling along alternate dimensions?

Traveling to alternate dimensions. You know, like the cheesy '5th dimension' from old movies which doesn't actually have an extra dimension, just more fog. Well, anything like that. Pocket dimensions. You get the point I hope. If not, it really doesn't matter that much.

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Quote: Original post by Ezbez Time travel is unbelievable to me. Slowing down time Matrix-style is also unbelievable. Anything relating to time basically confuses me, and so makes me not believe it (even if it really does happen in reality, but I wouldn't know). Actually, in some cases this could be realistic (see time dilation and related topics).

Note the little parenthesis comment. But I still don't believe it, regardless of whether or not it really does happen.

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Quote: Original post by Ezbez Instant communication is OK in my book. Better than the general alternatives of instant or faster-than-light travel. In general, instant communication has the same problems as FTL travel.

Okay, prehaps 'believable' isn't the right word, perhaps 'acceptable' would be a better word? I can accept information traveling at instantaneous speeds, but not people (and from the little bits of science that I do know, I gather that weird things like quantum entanglement might actually make this possible, but that's irrelevant, really).

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Anyway, the first near future technology that come to mind are nanomedicine (nanotechnology in medicine), possibly even that could eliminate natural death.

I really like this.

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Original post by Oluseyi Quote: Original post by T1Oracle 1) Computers may... a. Likely be evolve to use hand gesture systems (I think Minority Report used this concept, I never saw the movie) using either gloves or a remote motion sensor (both are plausible) Implausible. Unless people generally start to communicate using hand gestures, or these are very simple gestures, people will not adopt a unique system of communication just for interacting with machines.

Actually I strongly think we'll see more hand gestures used in computer interaction in the future. Although I haven't seen Minority Report so I can't confirm exactly what sort of gesture systems they used I have seen and read about lots of research projects that can detect human gestures such as pointing at objects as part of a computer interaction system. In fact we mightn't even need to use gestures for pointing; gaze tracking (computer detection of what you are looking at) is becoming more reliable these days.

Teleportation is believable to some extent, because it has been invented / discovered already, about 2 years ago in Sydney Australia. Granted, it was teleportation of a laser beam using some sort of quantum physics that is beyond me.

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Original post by Kest Quote: Original post by Oluseyi Implausible. Unless people generally start to communicate using hand gestures, or these are very simple gestures, people will not adopt a unique system of communication just for interacting with machines. Isn't that how the mouse came to be?

The mouse is called a pointer device for a reason - it took the natural notion/action of pointing and divorced/abstracted the visual and tactile. The original WIMP paradigm derived its name from Windows, Icons, Menus and Pointer. Babies point. Technology is now reaching the stage where the pointer can be returned to the screen cost effectively, re-unifying visual and tactile for a number of applications (Touchscreen, Wacom Cintiq).

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Original post by NIm They already have. How many people use a keyboard to communicate with anything but a computer?

The keyboard predates the computer. A piano has a keyboard. My BlackBerry has a keyboard, though you can argue that it is in effect a small computer. Your telephone has a keypad which can be used for textual input, too. One can even argue that the Morse code switch was a use of a keyboard, except that the sequence of keypresses defined the data rather than which key was pressed (for there was only one).

The closest thing to a unique communication system developed for computers is mouse gestures, and look at how those have taken off... not.

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The problem with pellet guns is that they need a seperate power source, and bullets contain thier own power source. Individual manufacture is not a problem, even in todays world, as mass production has existed for roughly two centuries.

The presumption is that futuristic weapons will find some alternative means of accelerating the pellet to the required escape velocity, as opposed to current weapons which require each pellet (as Kest right notes, the packaging of a pellet with the explosive, primer and casing is called a cartridge) to come with individual, non-variable power source packaging.

I saw a documentary about a year ago on History Channel that detailed an anti-tank weapon which used a simple metal clylinder with a tapered head as its sole form of ordinance. The projectile was placed in a launch casing, which was inserted into the gun and accelerated by electromagnetic means. The pellet gun is the future, miniaturized descendant of this gun.

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Original post by Trapper Zoid Actually I strongly think we'll see more hand gestures used in computer interaction in the future. Although I haven't seen Minority Report so I can't confirm exactly what sort of gesture systems they used I have seen and read about lots of research projects that can detect human gestures such as pointing at objects as part of a computer interaction system. In fact we mightn't even need to use gestures for pointing; gaze tracking (computer detection of what you are looking at) is becoming more reliable these days.

There is a lot of research in these areas, but I think it's driven by Hollywood characterizations more than by any sort of rational approach. Most cultures use gesture to support verbal communication, not to supplant it. We use our hands to manipulate tangible objects. Yet these HCI research projects discard this anthropological reality and create systems where all of your verbs are expressed with your fingers and all of your nouns are displayed on screen. It makes no sense. It's linguistically and cognitively fraudulent!

UI hardware innovations that have caught on have succeeded because they were designed to solve a specific problem - the mouse for indicating a point or region on a 2D plane, the keyboard for the entry of textual data. What problem, exactly, screams "gestures" as the logical solution?

In my view, the computers of the future generally are absorbed into other objects. They enhance our experience of our primary activities, but cross-pollinate so as to be aware of our preferences outside those immediate applications. Voice will be the primary interface. Gesture will support it, and it won't be anything elaborate like in Minority Report, nor will it require multi-touch interfaces (because the nature of the data being manipulated - effectively the current application - will allow the system to narrow down the number of verbs presented/required at any given instant).

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Original post by Oluseyi Quote: Original post by Kest Quote: Original post by Oluseyi Implausible. Unless people generally start to communicate using hand gestures, or these are very simple gestures, people will not adopt a unique system of communication just for interacting with machines. Isn't that how the mouse came to be? The mouse is called a pointer device for a reason - it took the natural notion/action of pointing and divorced/abstracted the visual and tactile. The original WIMP paradigm derived its name from Windows, Icons, Menus and Pointer. Babies point. Technology is now reaching the stage where the pointer can be returned to the screen cost effectively, re-unifying visual and tactile for a number of applications (Touchscreen, Wacom Cintiq).

Pointing itself is a gesture. Other gestures are no less natural than pointing (babies gesture thousands of messages). It's not too absurd, IMO, to imagine our current pointing gesture evolving into something more complex to control a simulated environment.

In the sci-fi game I am designing, there are both bullet/projectile weapons, and energy based weapons (and some that are both). Projectile weapons can have many different kinds of customizable ammunition.

The game starts out at a slightly higher tech level, and then drastically increases once you get your hands on a starship with a slipstream generator (unravels distances, and creates a one way wormhole, or something like that).