False Prophet wrote: ↑Sat Nov 02, 2019 9:37 am
Say, I wonder how is living in augmented reality in Macross as a cyborg? I mean, normal people found it distracting enough just to wear the Google Glasses. Imagine processing so much information that come with each step that you take.
All told, it's a much more seamless and immersive experience because the cybernetic residents of Macross Galaxy aren't experiencing it through a special pair of glasses that project information onto the lens or through a camera and screen. The implants in their brains are directly editing their perceptions of the world around them, like the augmented reality conferences in
Ghost in the Shell, and aren't limited to just visual perception... they can provide feedback for smell, taste, touch, and hearing as well, and all in real time. The experience is such that a user can't readily distinguish between objective reality and augmented reality because the implants are doing all the editing at the perceptual level in the brain itself.
Of course, this lends itself to precisely the kinds of abuses so frequently featured in
Ghost in the Shell with the company essentially controlling the minds of everyone who works for it.
The 51st Large-Scale Long-Distance Emigrant Fleet "Macross Galaxy" isn't a very nice place to live. It's basically a massive techno-industrial corporate research and development complex in the form of a massive spaceship. The fleet doesn't have an elected government, it's run by (and as) a corporation Weyland-Yutani style. The fleet isn't exactly a pleasant place to live thanks to the company's ruthless drive for efficiency. The support ships that had that were intended for production of natural foods (e.g. the
Riviera-class resort and aquaculture ships and
Sunnyflower-class agriculture ships) were retooled into factories to produce lower-cost synthetic food and the habitat ships are mostly urban industrial sprawls of apartments, factories, and so on. Augmented reality's a convenience feature of access to the fleet's network as far as most of its inhabitants believe. It can make them perceive empty industrial spaces as beautiful parks, allow them to play games that would be impossible for real life, and make the unpleasant synthetic food and drink taste look, smell, and taste like the most delicious high-quality gourmet cuisine. The ugliness of the fleet is hidden from its inhabitants behind a veil of digitally edited perceptual data.
Visitors to the fleet can experience a limited scope of this using what are essentially advanced AR goggles which the company provide... and in-universe it's acknowledged to be somewhat unsettling and off-putting for visitors.
False Prophet wrote: ↑Sat Nov 02, 2019 9:37 am
Also, I remember somewhere in Frontier it was mentioned that most of the people living in Macross Galaxy were employees of the corporations, so I expect the cybernetics they received were some sort of employee's benefits. That could mean when the parts broke down, you could get them repaired and the company would foot the bill--which means that being a cyborgs AND unemployed sucks so much.
Yes, the Macross Galaxy fleet isn't a flying city with a civilian government... it's a flying corporation that's run by the Macross Galaxy corporation, a subsidiary of General Galaxy. Its inhabitants are the corporation's employees.
It's not clear if implants are provided as part of employee benefits or if it's something residents have to purchase, but for most residents/employees the adoption of implants usually starts and ends with the brain implants which allow network communication and augmented reality. They're not going in for elective replacement of complete body parts. It's only the highest-ranking officials and the (illegal) combat cyborgs that have the more extensive adoption of cybernetics on an elective basis.
False Prophet wrote: ↑Sat Nov 02, 2019 9:37 am
(Ghost in the Shell Arise was the first show I watched that make the point of how expensive cybernetics were to maintain. I wonder if there are any other sci-fi works that talk about that subject.)
Yeah,
Ghost in the Shell's various incarnations go into a lot of the problems with cybernetics... and many of them apply in
Macross as well.
For most civilians, cybernetic implants start and end with the minimally-invasive network implants that let them connect their brains to the internet. Consumer-grade cybernetic limb replacements to repair severe injuries are just as responsive as a flesh and blood limb, but are visibly mechanical and look more like the automail from the
Fullmetal Alchemist series as in the case of Shinsei Industry-sponsored air racer Oscar Brauhitsch's left arm and Temjin's right eye. Cybernetics generally won't exceed the performance of the flesh and blood they replace due to the possibility of damaging the flesh and blood person they're attached to.
The wealthy and connected like Grace O'Connor can afford more extensive and high-tech cybernetics to improve their bodies or even outright replace them, achieving similar levels of augmentation to Major Kusangai. Macross Galaxy's creation of cybernetic soldiers ("cyber grunts") is illegal as all get-out under New UN Government law... but because they were half a galaxy away there wasn't much to do to enforce those laws and nobody to tattle in the fleet itself with the corporation having everyone's perceptions of reality under their control. Macross Galaxy experimented with several different types of augmented soldiers. Some, like Brera Sterne, are just soldiers who have network implants in their brains and enhanced bodies. The experimental Stella series cyborg soldiers were regular civilians who received the same full-body enhancements but have additional implants that provide all of the necessary combat skills without the need for training. Then, of course, there was the short-lived prototype Meridian project that created bio-androids from dead soldiers by using implants to reprogram their brains with a new personality and installing them in a new cybernetic body. (It says a lot that even mind-controlled troops like Brera Sterne found the Meridian project profoundly distasteful.)
False Prophet wrote: ↑Sat Nov 02, 2019 9:37 am
Speaking of Macross Galaxy, how exactly does the ship's stealth mechanism work?
Presumably it's the same stealth technology used by VFs... a mixture of passive stealth design and active stealth systems.
Passive stealthiness would, of course, come from designing the hull in a shape that deflects radar and fold wave radar beams away from the enemy radar system's receivers and minimizing reflection with hull coatings that will absorb radar waves or fold waves.
Active stealth technology in
Macross uses active cancellation... which is basically an electromagnetic wave version of the active noise cancellation technology, using destructive interference to cancel out the amplitude of the wave. The incoming radar pulse is analyzed, and the system produces a directional radar beam aimed at the sending enemy radar that has the same frequency and amplitude but is 180 degrees out of phase. Even though a hostile radar is receiving both the return of its pulse AND the active stealth system's radar pulse, the two waves cancel each other out via the superposition principle so the sum amplitude of the two waves becomes zero or so close to it that it reads as zero to the enemy radar. This creates the illusion that the enemy radar didn't receive any return at all, thus making the ship or aircraft technically invisible to the enemy radar.