saw on Slashdot, thought would make a good user creation

[FormerlyDickensC]

I don't do rules design, so someone out there might like this idea to incorporate into a new magic item or psionic device.

[D] [/D] "An AP wire reports that DARPA has granted a $6.7 million contract to Northrop Grumman to develop 'brainwave' binoculars. The binoculars will be built into a helmet, which will include EEG electrodes that will monitor the wearer's brain activity for patterns consistent with object identification/recognition. From what I can gather, the idea is that when you look at a far-off or partially obscured object without noticing it, your subconscious probably did notice it and tried, unsuccessfully, to identify it. The EEG in these binoculars would pick up on that kind of subconscious activity and draw the wearer's attention to the object in question. The goal is that these binoculars would be able to pick up on any object anywhere in the wearer's field of view, where a person can only pick up on things that he focuses both his eyes and his attention on. This delves into some very interesting territory: it would be an electronic device that uses human eyes to collect data, and even uses a human brain to partially process the data. Since it also passes its results back to the human providing the data and initial processing, it essentially adds a second processing loop in parallel to the wearer's visual system."

http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/06/20/1616204.shtml[D] [/D]

...or not.

 

[greyscale1]

awesome! Love to hear about stuff like this, thanks!

However, I think somehow in D&D terms this becomes less exciting.

It goes from awesome new tech to item with + 4 perception or, at most, the ability to reroll perception checks.

Neat, but not nearly as neat as the real life version.

That said, a character with some steampunky artificery techsmith style goggles that do this might still be cool.