GURPS Powers: Enhanced Senses

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Irioth

A few primates (e.g. gibbons) use bipedal walking as a secondary locomotion mode, yet their excellent brachiation suggests they have a better sense of balance than humans.

Their excellent shoulder flexibility, long arms in proportion to low body weight, and hook-like hands that are poor at object manipulation or throwing are major contributors to gibbon, siamang, and etc spectacular brachiation skills.
I don't see how balance is a big factor - with brachiation you don't fall off of a branch because you wobbled and dumped yourself, like a scansorial climber such as a squirrel risks.

Hanging is wonderfully self-stabilizing - there's some great science class demonstrations involving hanging various funny-looking weights off a table to demonstrate how this does great things for your centre of gravity. As long as your hook (hand, sloth-claws, whatever) is large enough to wrap around the tree limb and strong enough to keep the hook shape while bearing your weight (quite easy for the little brachiating apes, like gibbons) you're not going anywhere unless interfered with or your hand gets tired.

[Irioth]

Originally Posted by whswhs

* I don't consider Hyperspectral Vision to be a proper equivalent to Discriminatory Hearing or Smell or Sensitive Touch. The equivalent of all of those is normal human vision, vision without Bad Sight (and conversely, vision with Bad Sight (Low Resolution) is the equivalent of normal hearing). Hyperspectral Vision as defined in GURPS is an extension of the frequency range, as if hearing were extended both to subsonics and to ultrasonics (or even extreme ultrasonics). One is a matter of the ability to differentiate between objects by noticing fine details; the other is an expansion of the physical range of identifiable stimuli, which has some similar benefits as a side effect.

I understand your point, and I admit the parallelism in the game between the various available kinds of sense enhancements is far from perfect. But on the other hand, the way sight works it stands to reason that to expand the range of identifiable stimuli may improve the ability to differentiate between objects by a similar degree. Theoretically speaking, the ability to notice fine details might perhaps also be improved by different kinds of enhancements, but more color channels is probably easier to provide to the human eye and may be copied from animals.

On the other hand, it would be a serious hole in the system if sight could not be improved the same way and to the same amount as the other senses. Normal human vision is quite good, but just like human sense of balance, we should really avoid the pitfall of assuming it is the best evolution or genetic engineering can realistically do.

* It bothers me conceptually to say that Hyperspectral Vision extending from millimeter waves to vacuum UV gives +3, but biologically realistic Hyperspectral Vision extending only from NIR to near UV gives +4. On the other hand, if we limit the latter to +3, you're going to have a hard sell on getting people to take it if it's costlier than unrealistic Hyperspectral Vision!

* Underlying all of this, I think, is that part of the goal for any supplement of this type is to "save the appearances" as far as possible. That is, I can say, "Here's a biologically realistic version of Infravision, here's what it does, and here's what it costs," but I try to avoid either saying that the Basic Set RAW version is wrong or giving the realistic version radically different abilities (as would happen if I designed it de novo). I'm willing to change small details, as for example in GURPS Social Engineering I added one skill to the list of those impaired by Disturbing Voice, on the basis that it was helped by Voice; but I get increasingly hesitant to tell established GURPS players, "Hey, the Infravision you have on your character sheet was never valid and you should take this other version." Making established characters obsolete will make some players unhappy. Of course in your own campaign you're free to do exactly that and negotiate any complaints with your players!

I understand the author constraints you have worked under, but this is not going to help the RAW be any less wrong and outdated when it does. As much as I can tell, the system is burdened with too much backward-compatibility with outdated or mistaken legacy rules (Regrowth, anyone ?), not too little.

In the light of the improved scientific understanding this book provides to IR rules, RAW Hyperspectral Vision should be rewritten in an hypothetical 5th edition or reinterpreted up to then as a three-tiered advantage: realistic HV, with the combo of NIR sight and near UV sight; not-realistic HV with the addition of thermal IR and vacuum UV; even less realistic HV spanning from radio waves to gamma rays. Although it would be a different kind of biological eye enhancement, it may include night vision 5 as well to allow the cheapest version to eliminate darkness penalties like the old version did. I would not expect too much complaints about this b/c the benefits of the RAW basic version and the cheapest revised version would balance out (that is, if you add night vision and the full benefits from Near IR vision).

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by whswhs

From the reading I did, it wasn't clear to me that that was the case; that is, that the human sense of balance is inferior to that of, say, cats as a sense. After all, human beings spend their entire lives balancing on two limbs! We take that for granted as obvious and trivial, in the same way that we take having high visual resolution for granted; but not many mammals can do it. So I didn't feel I could justify including it as "biologically realistic."

If you feel otherwise, of course, or if you have research information to show that a chimpanzee's or a cat's semicircular canals are better than a human's, it's pretty trivial to define the ability.

We hold our bodies in perpetually horrible top heavy precarious positions. We lack counterbalancing tails. It is amazing that we don't fall over more often.

It's interesting that every animal mentioned as having much greater balance is significantly smaller. That makes me think it's really just greater strength to mass ratios and less inertia.

It's like how studies show that the elderly don't trip more often, they just don't have the strength to correct themselves before hitting the ground.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Irioth

On the other hand, it would be a serious hole in the system if sight could not be improved the same way and to the same amount as the other senses. Normal human vision is quite good, but just like human sense of balance, we should really avoid the pitfall of assuming it is the best evolution or genetic engineering can realistically do.

I don't agree with that. In point of fact, we have fairly good data on the functioning of a lot of animal senses. We have data on senses humans lack, such as electric field senses and probably magnetic senses; data on senses we have only marginally, such as echolocation and infrared source perception; and data on senses that other animals have much more of, such as a star-nosed mole's tactile sense, a bloodhound's olfaction, or an owl's hearing. But as far as I can tell, the only animals that have better eyesight than hominids are the raptors, and the difference is pretty marginal and can be captured fairly well as a level or two of Telescopic Vision. We really do seem to be at the peak of the animal kingdom in visual acuity. We're five to ten times better than most mammals!

And my view of the matter is that if we're going to talk about "biologically realistic abilities," we have to look at what actual living organisms can do, not at what we might like to imagine living organisms could do.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Irioth

In other words, you assume humans and cats/squirrels/monkeys have the same overall degree of sense of balance, but they specialize it for different tasks (bipedal locomotion vs. arboreal quadrupedal locomotion) and evolution already hit the optimization ceiling for sense of balance and genetic engineering cannot realistically improve on that. I'm not convinced on either point.

What I require is to be convinced that it's not the case by evidence of animals that truly do have superior equilibrioception. I couldn't find any, and I did look at books than discussed this, though not at a complete book that discussed nothing else. I'm willing to be shown empirical data.

If I were going to look for superior sense of balance, it wouldn't be at brachiators or even scansors; it would be at the seal species that used to be trained for circus acts. My recollection is that they could do some impressive feats. Are there any scientific data on them?

[Flyndaran]

I would likely pick the most 3D acrobatic species. That makes me think of some species of bats. Or maybe goats as even tiny miscalculations in jumping leads to death.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I would likely pick the most 3D acrobatic species. That makes me think of some species of bats. Or maybe goats as even tiny miscalculations in jumping leads to death.

I don't think that's balance; I think it's DX.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I don't think that's balance; I think it's DX.

What animal has lots of one but not the other?

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I don't think that's balance; I think it's DX.

Honestly, balance, proprioception, and eye-hand coordination should all be DX rolls, for all that they're forms of perception.

[NineDaysDead]

Originally Posted by whswhs

* Matter is a legitimate category if Energy is a legitimate category; the two have roughly comparable extent.

For those interested, Kromm's Answer:

Originally Posted by Kromm

"Detect Matter" is just shorthand for "Detect Gravitational Effects Caused By Matter."