I'm planning to write an agent/cyberpunk story set in late 2030s, where the main character uses an invisibility suit to cloak himself from his enemies. I'm going to do some research, but I'm also asking from you. If you have some tips or ideas, please share them.
True omnidirectional invisibility requires that photons pass through in all directions unimpeded. This means the photons cannot interact with anything inside the invisibility suit/field/shell. Therefore, the person within is blind.
Well, if it's not magical and you need a psuedo-science explanation, I would go with nano technology combined with flexible ultra high-definition displays. Because it's a work of fiction, just take what we have now, and 'kick it up a notch'. ~ J. J.
They already did this with a car. It was covered in a veil of special LED matting. The LEDs were paired to a Canon 5D Mark II on the other side of the car, which supplied video. Not pure invisibily, but a pretty cool start. And yeah, in the future who knows what tech would allow it to work. I like in Predator that it wasn't perfect. It's more like cammo than it is pure invisibility. PS, how do I delete the silly attachment I put on in error? Edit: Done!
You have to edit the post, then see the list of attachments and unselect one. It's a pain to find. Anyways, Yeah that what I was thinking. But we're talking about a cloak, not a whole body suit. I don't think you could find a 'perfect' omnidirectional cloaking cloak, just something that would work in a pinch. Maybe. I dunno, it's his story, maybe he needs his character to be completely invisible, even in broad daylight.
Optical Camouflage is not far off, and it is perfectly realistic to think that someone with a sizable budget could purchase one in 2030, at least in this reality. You should look into a Canadian company called "Hyperstealth". They are the closest right now, at least in the public arena. The pentagon is probably working furiously on a model as well, but that's all under the purview of DoD's many black projects so you probably won't find much in the public domain on that, but it's worth a look. There are several methods. The more common models will probably utilize carbon tubes fabricated on the nano-scale to create a "mirage effect", the same effect you get when you see a hot sand dune shimmer in the summertime. The more expensive ones will probably take advantage of advanced light redirection technology to actually bend the light around, rather than reflecting it or projecting a perfect image of what is behind you. I forgot what university it was exactly, but some lab here in the US recently made a breakthrough in light-bending materials.
I am very skeptical about the 'Quantum Stealth' cloak, and it's interesting that they only have photoshop 'mock ups' on the site. But who knows. You would have to have some way for the person under the cloak to be able to see. That's one aspect, the other is that as soon as you have folds in the material you would get all sorts of distortions. Ideally the surface would have to be essentially flat to work properly. Getting a cloak to work form one side is relatively do-able, but from all sides, in motion? Tough ask.
Maybe I should pull the nanotechnology card. The suit should be practical and easy to use, but it gives the wearer an edge in ambushes and sniping. But with some restrictions. The suit's cloaking isn't fully making the main character invisible - more like camouflaging him to the background. By-passers won't notice him unless they know how to find the wearer. Range is the key - having range to the hostile lowers the risk to be exposed. I got another idea, concerning my main character's suit. I started to think Batman's Bat suit-like protective suit as an option. Not necessarily with optical cloaking, but with more mobility (glider wings), protection and payload (more ammo and equipment). I'll look what I can get. Thank you all for your opinions and tips.
how can a 'suit' make him totally invisible?... his head at least would still show, unless the 'suit' had a face-covering hood... or at least his eyes, unless he wore glasses that were invisible and made his eyes invisible...
Well, I'm not going to make the suit go totally invisible. More like using advanced nanotech camouflage to blend in to the enviroment. It's like the typical camouflage suit used by many armies around the globe, but in my story the nanotech camouflage suit can adjust itself to mimic its surroundings. Invisibility suit was the original idea, but then I changed it.
Payload? Wings? This is starting to sound less like an invisibility cloak and more like a suit of powered armor...
@salamander The "invisibility" suit is one idea and the the armor is other one. They are seperate ideas. But I think I could use them both in my story.
If the suit was made of an HD LED cloth (which they can already make) they could be advanced enough to also contain a light sensor that acts as a kind of camera. Each sensor (almost the size of film grain) is mapped to a cousin, which is located on the other side of the suit where the light would come out if passing through. Instead of light passing through, it is captured by the sensor and replicated on the other side. For the eyesight problem, a nanoscreen inside a face mask could replicate the sensors outside the mask to display an image of what he would see, while also replicating that behind the head. When this suit is viewed from any angle the light displayed is a replication of the light that would have passed through, mapped through an extremely complex computer calculation, to take into account the body's shape, size and movement-- like breathing. It would end up looking something like the Predator cloaking device. The outline of the person and their shadow would both still exist, but the suit could compensate for light hitting it and be made of a material that doesn't reflect. The shading in all the crevices of the suit, like curved arms, armpits, neckline etc, could be compensated for. Kind of like noise cancellation headphones. You can trick the brain with drawn pictures, causing you to see shading, colours and shapes that don't actually exist. A central computer could take care of all this, perhaps located on the back, or arm. This is way out there and riddled with problems but a good start I believe in explaining a possible working suit in the future that may seem plausible, if not actually possible.
the cloth, if it was flexible, would fail. Imagine a piece of cloth moving slightly, a ripple, a breeze, movement of the person underneath, the cloth would move, the angles would change, and the alignment between linked sensors would then be off. plus, if you are viewing the cloaked person from different angles the image would be off. Moreover, if person A viewed LED x from position 1, and person B viewed LED x from a position say.... 60 degrees to one side, LED x would have to be displaying different images for each person viewing...
I'm not saying it's possible. But this forms the basis of a system that could be used to explain the basics, while leaving the impossible elements to be explained away with vagueness. 'It kinda works like this but is more complicated.' Also, the cloth could be a cloak, something more rigid and shapeless than a jacket and pants. The angle issue has been concerning me while brainstorming. I'm sure I'll think of something. The complexity of diode mapping and how they work could take care of this, so that each diode can replicate a 180 degree spectrum from multiple sources, but that's just getting silly.
Now I'm having a stealth/camouflage suit that can adjust its camouflage colors and pattern with nanotechnology to match its surroundings. Some form of "active camouflage", made by military R&D department and an intelligence agency's science division for special reconnaissance missions. The suit is known as SPECTRE (Special Tactics and Reconnaissance) Mk. II. Reinforced with Kevlar to give some protection. While not being the invisibility suit, it gives the wearer a better chance to fool the adversaries from range. At short range "NanoCamo" isn't very effective, and a hostile could see the wearer.
