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Original post by T1Oracle 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.

Battlefield 2142 has this in the rifle rockets. It's very intuitive and quite powerful if you've got a half second and two braincells to rub together.

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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.

Breakdowns have been reviled in many games, because randomness leads to probability, and with one gun failing and another operating normally, players can hear the dice rattling.

I'd add something simple, but fundamental to make your game seem futuristic. Electric cars that never shift gears and need to be recharged instead of refueled would be a good example.

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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage Quote: 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. Breakdowns have been reviled in many games, because randomness leads to probability, and with one gun failing and another operating normally, players can hear the dice rattling.

that and in most fps type games the player is going to be carrying 10-15 wepaons anyway so 95% of the time the player will not die becouse the technology is realistic but becouse they didnt memorize the switch to backup weapon hotkey,
though in a tactics type game this actaully sounds like good idea

Plausible technologies:

Universal Translator
The UT would be a device that consist of 2 parts. The transmitter and the receiver.

The transmitter would be implanted in the throat (or other voice producing organ) and would pick up a sub vocalisation of the users language. It would then connect to a small portable computer (which may be part of the implant, but could be wirelessly connected to another computer). The computer would then translate your sub vocalizations in real time into the language of the recipient (through a small speaker).

The receiver would reverse this, by taking the incoming speech of another language and converting it in real time into your native language.

These two devices would also be able to listen to an unknown language and formulate a translation of it, by its self. They would be able to learn a language. If two people with UTs that didn't have a translation cipher for each others language would be able to transmit the appropriate ciphers to each other wirelessly.

This is a very plausible technology and the basics of it are currently in existence. We have translator devices that you can speak into and it will translate your words into the selected target language (some of them in real time). A sub vocalization translator is in development, and translators that learn new languages are also being developed (and they do have a working prototype). So this technology might even be in public use in less than 10 years.

Nanofactories
Nanofactories are devices like the (currently existing) 3D printers. But instead of just using larger blobs of material, these would be able to manipulate individual molecules or even atoms into position. These would allow us to "Print" out whatever objects that we desire. These would revolutionize manufacturing. We could literally download the blueprints of an object/device and print it on the Nanofactory.

3D printers exist, and work is being done on Nanomanipulators that can move molecules. In around 20 to 30 years this technology will mature and we should be able to produce the Nanofactory. The important thing is, once we have the ability for a Nanofactory to be able to manufacture another nanofactory, the Nanofactories could be then very easily and cheaply produced, making the spread of this technology rapid and cost effective.

High Resolution Medical Scanners
These are just improvements on current medical sensing technologies. These would allow a body to be scanned to the molecular or even atomic level (in a non destructive fashion). Combined with a Nanofactory, this could really give us transporter technology as then we could scan an object (even a person) and then send that data to the destination and have a Nanofactory reproduce the scanned object. Current estimates of when technology like this might be available is in 30 to 50 years.

Computers able to reproduce a functioning Human brain
This kind of technology would allow a person to "download" their brain into a computer. The computer would need the memory capacity to store all this data and also need the processing capacity to accurately "run" the emulation.

If Moore's Law holds true we should see the first computer with this kind of capacity (both memory and processing power) in about 15 to 20 years time. It might be around 20 to 25 years before it becomes cheap enough for the average person to afford. But if Moore's Law keeps holding true, then in 18 months time we will have a single computer that could emulate 2 brains, then 18 months time 4 brains, and so on. Within another 20 years the processing capacity of a single computer might be able to emulate the entire world...

Laser/Plasma Weapons
This is not your simple Laser as in the type of laser used in a CD player. This weapon uses a laser to Ionise (turn into a plasma) a stream of air between the "Gun" and the target. This stream of ionized air is capable of conducting electricity. This can then be used to deliver an electric shock to the victim.

This kind of weapon has already been demonstrated, but it is not yet practical for field use (and the safety has not been fully investigated). This kind of weapon is plausible as it has already been shown to work. It is just that the power source and laser needs to be reduced in size and weight before it could be useful as a real weapon (at the moment it must be mounted on a vehicle - but this usage would be currently practical).

Very interesting topic.

A lot of good points been made already, I just want to add one of my problems with most of todays and old science fiction stories (movies, books, games).

Most that takes place in near future (maybe 50 years from the present) that explains or shows how cities will look like, exaggerate that part so much that it starts to be amusing. Basically if you see a movie taking place in the year 2030, they do a nice overview over a city and it looks completely futuristic, high tech ect... don't you ask yourself where all the old buildings have gone? How could they wipe out the whole city and build a 100 times bigger one on top within 30 years?
It becomes even more clear when you see old movies and games that describe the future, which is present already and how they overstimate the advancement of technologies in some categories while totally forgetting/neglecting other fields of science.

PS: But what is even more frustrating is the fantasy genre. If someone mentions RPG or even adds the word fantasy to it, all people think of orcs, elves, bows and magic. How can a whole genre be so restricted to the Tolkien saga.

http://www.tenthdimension.com/flash2.php certainly provides an interesting approach to the concepts of String Theory and the potential for time-travel / alternate universes / teleportation even if in its approachability it sacrifices some accuracy. (Highlight Side Menu -> Imagining the Tenth Dimension)

Definitely an interesting post.

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Original post by kiome Basically if you see a movie taking place in the year 2030, they do a nice overview over a city and it looks completely futuristic, high tech ect... don't you ask yourself where all the old buildings have gone? How could they wipe out the whole city and build a 100 times bigger one on top within 30 years?

Production designers are rarely urban planning afficionados. Their emphasis is on constructing an environment that underscores whatever utopia/dystopian vision of the future the director wishes to present.

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It becomes even more clear when you see old movies and games that describe the future, which is present already and how they overstimate the advancement of technologies in some categories while totally forgetting/neglecting other fields of science.

You should read Arthur C. Clarke's Profiles of the Future. First, the business of being a prophet - for that is what a science fiction writer is, in many respects - is a hazardous one. If you study the correlation between science fiction and scientific advancement, you will find that in some areas science fiction was too aggressive, but in others it was far too conservative. It's just one of those things.

Clarke posits that there are two forms of failure that afflict scientists, and that those same failures afflict writers of speculative [science] fiction - failure of imagination, where the scientist simply fails to conceive a possibility that will inevitably seem obvious in retrospect; and failure of nerve, where all the available data points toward a conclusion, but it is so far removed from accepted wisdom that the scientist rejects it. Of the two, failure of nerve is by far the worse.

It was also in this book that Clarke put forth what were called, in the French language print of the first edition, Clarke's First and Second Laws. In the revised second edition, amused at this, he proceeded to intentionally coin his Third, and by far most famous, "Law":

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Never forget that when creating distant future worlds. [smile]

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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.

Actually it has been discovered that most of the guestures that follow speech (facial and hand) are universal and cross all language and cultural boundries (an American smile has the same meaning in China and the Congo, the same is true of pointing). Although there are some hand guestures that are obviously cultural (flipping people off) there is still plenty that can be put into a hand guesture system. It doesn't have to be complex and a keyboard (maybe a virtual one) may still be needed.

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Original post by Oluseyi 1966, Star Trek. Tricorder.

This is something that I should have made more clear. By sci-fi I mean video game sci-fi, I only made one reference to movies. In fact I even said that Hollywood was good enough to hire "experts" to develop sci-fi tech ideas. That is better than what most games do.

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Original post by Oluseyi Bullets require shell casings

Never heard of the H&K G11? Caseless ammo as well as flechette rounds (think winged armor piercing darts through a smooth bore barrel) already exist, they just aren't practical (in small arms) yet.

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Original post by Oluseyi How often do you see grenades in sci-fi?

All the time except they call them plamsa and they are always inferior to OICW technology. Delay fuses are very effective things.

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Original post by Oluseyi 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.

Maybe, although silent guns are still boring and lasers are silent. The more I think about it the less cool they sound. Meh

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Original post by Oluseyi 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.

The player will not care until they experience it. The details that lead to greater immersion are rarely noted by players. All they underst and that was good, that was ok, or that sucked. It may not be always necessary, but the idea should be given more consideration. Futuristic does not have to equal perfect, perfect will never happen.

Anyway, thank you for your counterpoints.

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Original post by Oluseyi The pellet gun is the future, miniaturized descendant of this gun.

Uhh... I have a pellet gun sitting in my draw, and as cool as it is with its realistic feeling weights... Alright I'll stop... Regardless, rail guns are not pellet guns and I have yet to see a design that was small. The latest I've seen in that technology was a plan for a ship that can divert 100% of the power from its engines to a giant rail gun launching cheap aluminum projectiles in place of expensive missles or shells. It would be nice if they were smaller.

Anyway, the primary advantage they provide is that unlike with shells they are not accellerated by a single blast. Their accelleration occurs over the length of the barrel with a constant force. That allows less recoil and more power. There is a similar technology in the works for guns using electricity to generate a plasma thus lauching the bullet.

[Edited by - T1Oracle on November 5, 2006 3:38:37 AM]

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Original post by Oluseyi 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?

I can only speak for the research I've seen, but the majority of gesture recognition I've seen is for directing machines in real 3D environments - for example directing a robot to pick up a bottle by pointing at that particular object. Maybe not a desktop PC environment, but I'm not sure what the definition of a future "computer" is in this discussion. In a real world environment where the user may not be directly touching an interface device it makes sense to use gestures as part of the interface system, although I do agree that in terms of near future technology it makes sense to integrate it with voice commands as a method of disambiguation.

Sorry I've only got that to add right now; I'll read the rest of the thread to see if I've got anything else to add.

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Additional: Heh, I might have slightly missed the point of the discussion as I was skimming through it: I thought this was about near future technology trends that could be incorporated into sci-fi, whereas it's more general than that. I picked up on the gesture recognition because it's vaguely in my area of research.

Personally I think gesture recognition in the forms of pointing or waving signals will become integrated in widely available systems in the near future, but mainly for the sort of applications where gestures are appropriate for human interaction (signalling over a distance, pointing to various objects). However I suspect these will be limited to large exaggerated movements so the system can easily interpret them. I haven't seen Minority Report (or read the book it's based on) so I'm not sure what sort of gestures they had there, but I don't think intricate specialised gesture systems will catch on for anything other than for special tasks as reading deaf sign language. If you've got a camera system than can see where each finger is positioned then you might as well get the computer to lip read.

[Edited by - Trapper Zoid on November 5, 2006 4:13:21 AM]

Flies and possibly other animals have greater precision in "feeling" time. It is as if their "clocks" run faster. But they die faster too.
I think this could be an interesting topic in games, where you can tweak your own senses at the expense of "life"...

Adding on something different to the human-computer interaction debate:

If you are aiming for a realistic feel to your futuristic story or game the main thing that bugs me is not the tech but the culture; too many sci-fi worlds try too hard with the tech but then make their characters act like late 20th/early 21st century people except with laser guns. If your setting is in the 24th century then I'd expect people to act at least as different when compared to us in the 21st as we would when compared to the average early 18th century person, in terms of language, music, clothes, religion, politics, everyday daily life, even just the way people think.

Of course getting that right is pretty hard, so if I were to make a futuristic game I'd steer away from realism and just put everyone in those tinfoil suits with saucer-shaped ridges that were popular back in 50s sci-fi shows and give them plastic-looking ray-guns than shoot green beams with electronic effects for that "retro-sci-fi" look. But that's just me [smile].