So, as my Explorator's first Aquisition, I took myself a Good-craftmanship MIU. Delicious bonuses to hit, and skill use.

However, as my GM brought up, I won't have to worry about lighting when I mentioned trying to find a lamp; my MIU allows me to see through my servo-skulls sight (with Dark Sight!) as part of it's abilities.

Great, I said! So, how does it work? And... we both couldn't find anything on this.

Is there any official ruling on how MIU sense-using takes place? Is it like a picture within a picture in your head, with your view and the servo-skulls linked into one? Or is it more of a 'out of body' experience, where you shut yourself down/zone out whilst you manuever your familiar?

This would all depend on what you are doing.

In my game, if you plug in to a servo skull and use it's eyes, I would say it might be like a 3rd person game from the POV of the skull or possibly as a HUD effect only you can see. If you are plugged into a command throne, or something, to control a cyber-creature then I would have it be from the creatures perspective. I would vary the whole thing up situationally, maybe you could even switch between viewpoints.

Titans are described as if the Titans body and the commanders body are one and the same, but that is a bit different than a standard MIU.

Indeed, it really depends on how much you focus on any one task and how your mind is capable of dealing with multiple sources of input. Given that, as per the RAW, your character does not receive any penalties or go into a trance when connecting to a remote unit, so it reads as if the the entire activity would lean more towards the "image in an image" idea you mentioned.

Imagine a live feed projected into your helmet, and displayed in a small window - just that you don't actually have a helmet and it all happens in your mind! Or simply compare it to watching two TVs simultaneously. You'd likely pay more attention to one of them but could shift immediately if your subconsciousness catches something interesting on the other. Given time, the character could even "adapt" to watching multiple independent sources of visual information.

For inspiration you could look at the Ghost in the Shell anime where the cybernetically augmented characters regularly have images displayed in their field of vision. Similar technology is used in the Shadowrun RPG for its so-called Image Links. The concept is based on Augmented Reality .

Mm. Given the lack of penalties, I always simply envisioned it as picture within a picture stuff, like you see on things like the sports shows. You've got one big view of yours, and then some Aquilla decorated window at the corner of your view, as if it was some kind of HUD on a video game. The window obviously having the view of the familiar. ;D

You guys aren't thinking awesome enough. It's not Picture in Picture, it's just "You also see this". There's no reason for it to overlap. It just doesn't make sense to us at first because we have to frame of reference.

Fenrisnorth said:

I agree with you, and yes I think that awesomely

It's just a lot easier for most people to wrap their head around a HUD/PiP description.

Imo it's just not a question of technical possibilities, but also a matter of how the brain is actually capable of interpreting the feed. We are born and used to see with two eyes, but what would happen if later in our lives we'd suddenly grow a third one on the back of our head? Could we really use it right away without fear of getting unbalanced or would we just mess things up because we're not accustomed to it? This is why I tend to stick with the "image in image" idea - it just sounds easier on the user.

To be fair, tech-priests are known for hacking their own brains. Both psychologically (with programs and memetics), and physically (with drills and saws).

I think it would be safe to assume that while you might not originally have that capability, it's possible to gain it relatively easily - where relatively equals if you're rich/important enough to afford it.

@Lynata

Not at first, no, but the Human brain is remarkably resiliant at times, I would assume learning the cybernetic is part of the 1d20-TB implantation time.