AI / camera vision improvement

[Zamujasa]

This is a security camera.

A small, high quality camera with thermal, light-amplification, and diffused laser imaging to see through walls. It is tied into a computer system, allowing those with access to watch what occurs around it.

It would be nice if any of this existed:

- AI vision can be hilariously poor in dark environments, and unlike players there's no way to light it up
- The cameras can't see through walls
- The "thermal" thing is OK because you can see cloakers, which is Good Enough

Suggestions:

- Using a camera viewer (or being the AI) should increase the brightness floor somewhat, so that stuff is at least visible without having to crank your monitor's gamma up. A tradeoff for non-AIs in that you're completely oblivious to what's going on around you
- The static overlay could be removed and replaced with a mesons-style tinted turf-only view. Would make the static less visually annoying and allow seeing the structure of the station
- Networked devices should always be visible above the static, like doors, APCs, light switches, computers... if you don't want the AI messing with it, cut the AI control wires

[zjdtmkhzt]

I think these would be some great quality of life changes for AIs, but concerning seeing all machines without cameras, not all of them have AI control cables you could snip, right?

[Lady Birb]

Cameras used to be able to see through walls perfectly, but this was unexpectedly removed when AI cameras were revamped to use the AI eye instead. Despite me bitching about this ENDLESSLY since the AI Eye update, coders have refused to acknowledge that this ever existed. Glad to see I am no longer the only one bitching.

(also if AIs get the ability to see through walls again for gods sake no meson-overlay please)

[Frank_Stein]

I think letting the AI cycle through different vision modes would be a good way to go about things. Some options:

• An infrared mode for both low lighting and tracking cloaked people, instead of having the AI notice them by default
  
• A mode tracking power flow through the station. Hot wires and powered electrical equipment is highlighted
  
• An atmospheric tracker for monitoring gas levels throughout the station
  

[Zamujasa]

Cameras used to be able to see through walls perfectly, but this was unexpectedly removed when AI cameras were revamped to use the AI eye instead. Despite me bitching about this ENDLESSLY since the AI Eye update, coders have refused to acknowledge that this ever existed. Glad to see I am no longer the only one bitching.

(also if AIs get the ability to see through walls again for gods sake no meson-overlay please)

The cyborg meson overlay honestly feels like garbage because it turns the whole screen green; human ones don't do that. (And it's even dimmer, argh.)

And yeah, I miss the seeing-through-walls part. Some maps are SERIOUSLY not designed for that restriction -- mostly Cog2, where a ton of regular station areas are just... not visible. Even Cog1 has some areas that suffer from this (you can't see the ruckingenur kit in mechanics, and a big spot is missing in the hallway by the pool)

I think letting the AI cycle through different vision modes would be a good way to go about things. Some options:

• An infrared mode for both low lighting and tracking cloaked people, instead of having the AI notice them by default
  
• A mode tracking power flow through the station. Hot wires and powered electrical equipment is highlighted
  
• An atmospheric tracker for monitoring gas levels throughout the station
  

Having to swap to different modes would just make playing as AI more of a chore.

Not being able to see cloakers by default would make them even more powerful.
Power flow would be neat, but you can sort of see that through the power monitoring computer.
Atmos tracking was more useful when the air monitors were still in regular use.

[aft2001]

How about we add more cameras fucking everywhere, and yes, including backwater maintenance tunnels. Possibly AI-Only cameras that can't be used by camera monitors, too.

Additionally, just, increasing brightness of AI vision. Another possible addition would be adding camera lights on top of that, which you could toggle on/off and would create a light source equivalent to that of a flashlight (maybe dimmer but with a larger radius of influence) on whatever camera(s) your eye is dependent upon in its position.

You could also always use the Thermal Vision that's used when someone uses thermals, as that has recently been fixed to let you see better in the dark.

[FULLDEMOCRATICCOMMUNISTFASCISM]

What if there is like stages of the AI being able to access things:

Off camera - Takes longer for the AI to access the machine.

A certain wire or something cut in the APC - Takes the AI even longer to access the machine since it has to do it with WIFI or something, and because it only has 1 network whatever it can only do it with a single APC at a time.

Not station-bound device - Unable to access completely.

And then there could be some traitor item comparable to an emag that when used on something loads malware that keeps synths from accessing it. Of course you can't just run around using it on everything, since the AI would notice it's been tampered with as soon as it tries to use the machine. Maybe human mechanics could undo it with a multi-tool.