Well, you'd probably have gotten a lot cleaner answer if you'd just looked up the EM spectrum and what it contains, but, since you asked, the EM spectrum goes from Gamma rays with the highest frequency and smallest wavelength, all the way down though a big long list of Radio wave frequencies which don't matter because Enhanced only goes into the THz range. Enhanced Vision lets you see, as regular humans can see visible light: Gamma Rays, X-Rays, Ultraviolet, Visible, Infrared and then the T-Ray band. For practical purposes, though, you can mostly ignore the Gamma, X and T rays, unless people also pick up emitters for those, since they don't naturally occur very often unless you're looking in the right spots in space. If they do have emitters, this just allows them to basically perform an X-Ray or T-Ray scan like they were at an airport or doctor's office, only they can do it without any special imaging equipment, they only need their eyes. Also you can see in several dozen colors.

I think the OP is asking, what impact on the setting would Enhanced Vision have? As in, he is asking it in much same way one might ask what impact did the discovery of electricity have, the industrial revolution, landing on the moon, the development of nuclear physics, or the ability to transplant organs. I don't know of many examples off hand of how seeing in many more spectrums than normal impacts a story. The only thing I can think of right now is Geordi La Forge from Star Trek: The Next Generation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geordi_La_Forge

Noble Pigeon wrote:

As a GM I'm not exactly used to games where players have cheap access to things like being able to see in x-ray vision all the time, so I'm not quite sure how to handle situations like this since I'm much more interested in telling a compelling story rather than have to accommodate for the pinpoint scientific accuracy of the result of almost everyone being able to see things beyond the normal visual spectrum.

I would direct you to look at Panopticon's gear section and the relevant mentions of sensory filters so that biomorphs can choose which spectra to observe at a given time, because this is important. I think I can sum up what I'm about to say as "Sh*t be bright, yo!", but I'll offer some more eloquence. When you look at the various spectra, there's a hell of a lot of information there that's not exactly easily interpreted on top of the various other spectra. For example, UV light is bright. Really, really bright. You can't really focus on it AND visible light at the same time. In fact, areas with high amounts of UV light might just outright blind you to slightly more mundane details; it could effectively render you colourblind or even blind outright. Meanwhile, IR is much lower on the spectrum. It's dark. It's just as hard to focus on that and the visible spectra as it is to see the stars in the city, for much the same reasons. Everything that's said about UV, apply double to higher ends of the spectrum. T-Rays, meanwhile, can't emit constantly because then you're a walking radiation hazard. Similarly, it pings your enemy with your position if they have a radiation scanner or T-Ray detector of their own. Short version: There's a hell of a lot to see and you can only focus on a small fraction at once. Players have access to a big tool-kit with enhanced vision - it allows for chemical analysis, seeing through walls, not being affected by darkness, etc. - but it's very much a double-edged sword. You can't be scanning every spectrum all the time without risking major sensory overload. You can't be looking through walls constantly because you'll get arrested (if you're lucky). Whatever spectrum you ARE looking into has its advantages and disadvantages. And, always remember, their enemies have cheap access to this too; they can track by the heat of footprints, spot their T-Ray projector, etc.

Another note: T-ray vision is listed somewhere in the core rules as only penetrating a certain amount of AR/Durability barrier. If you go the page in the combat section which lists the AR and Dur of various structural materials you will find that T-ray vision basically lets you look through the Transhuman equivalent of drywall, but serious flooring or ceilings will probably stop it, as will any sort of armored building. I also tend to play it as 'you can see through it, but it degrades your vision'. In other words, T-rays are great for checking out what knicknacks someone has in their pockets but if you do try looking through walls things will be very blurry...Not unlike looking at something through so many sheets of gauze that you're having trouble seeing through them. The closer the structural numbers get to the T-ray limit, the more I tend to 'obscure' detail. It also bears mentioning that X-ray or T-ray 'views' as we are used to seeing them are shadows cast by the X-rays or T-rays. If you're trying to see based on reflective capability, with the emitter something you are holding and pointing at a distant object, then I would liken that to trying to find a white car in dense fog using a flashlight...As opposed to perceiving the silhouette of said car if the light were on the far side of it. Superman-vision it ain't. Not at those prices. I don't do this to handicap the players...I do this to handicap the NPCs. Because otherwise the players would constantly be doing things using 20th c. estimations of visibility that would be 'in plain sight' to wide-band vision capable surveillance.

I play an engineer in Space station 13 nd i use t-ray emitters quite frequently to trace power conduits and atmos pipes. can be fairly useful in finding the telltale heart :P

Shunka wrote:

Another note: T-ray vision is listed somewhere in the core rules as only penetrating a certain amount of AR/Durability barrier. If you go the page in the combat section which lists the AR and Dur of various structural materials you will find that T-ray vision basically lets you look through the Transhuman equivalent of drywall, but serious flooring or ceilings will probably stop it, as will any sort of armored building.

Any amount of metal or water will also block t-rays. I'm guessing that in the future, everyone is using tinfoil against surveillance.

actually the human mind is already greatly adept at obscuring detail and consolidating data. unless we focus on something our eyes deliberately blur out what is not relevant. Also an excellent example of the mind bluring things together is your monitor. the orange in your exhuman sig is not actually orange. it is a combination of various blues, greens and reds. at normal viewing distance the mind combines these into color orange. I'd imagine with a new array of always on spectra the mind would do additional consolidation there. Hell most light toned people already have partly translucent skin but you have to be close and focus on it to notice it.

Mostly on /TG/Sybil

A good way to deal with unfiltered enhanced vision is with color blending. Sure you can detect UV light, but can you separate that from the other light you're seeing? If something is reflecting green light and red light, you're not going to see green and red, you're going to see something yellowish brownish. So if something's reflecting UV and, say, blue, you might not be able to separate the colors.

It's amazing what you can build with just one-dimensional amino acid chains held together by weak van der Waals forces.