How should one visualise a typical multiplayer match in an Empire FPS multiplayer match??
Chock full of excellence.
And no lag, due to direct neural interfaces.
Direct neural interface wouldn’t remove lag, just make the interface much better. The immense processing power and bandwidth (when not playing across tangle) they have’d remove lag.
And full of pain.
Like war, only simulated.
VR passed “indistinguishable from reality” quite a while back. Although playing with full algetics enabled is only for the particularly hardcore who insist that not being able to feel your lungs dissolve when the oppo break out the chemical weapons is for scrubs who lack authenticity.
And they know so much more about it than mere torturers . After all, they’re doing it for the Art.
…so.
Do they ever have the Matrix problem, where you lose track of which is base reality?
Or does the soul-shard keep things grounded or at least provide a silver thread back to the rest of the Transcend to follow?
Standard virtuality protocols include a carrier signal whose sole purpose is to ensure that that doesn’t happen, a few reophrenics or virtual identity dysphorics aside. That said, if someone has trapped you in a virtual realm for nefarious purposes, they don’t have to provide that signal - or, if you really want to destroy your own sense of reality, you can always filter it out or even invert it.
(In the former case, at least, there’s always a Janiastre device - How Deep Is That Rabbit Hole? | The Eldraeverse - which will reliably detect almost all possible simulation spaces.)