Wow, I absolutely love how you're coming up with somewhat plausible ways for Philomela to do things like this. My own clockwork gryphon character just has enchanted glass eyes, far more magical but less interesting conceptually.

If she's only got low-res infrared sensors, it must be rather difficult in an environment where most things are the same temperature. A burning room, or even just things like trees, ground, rocks, etc. I bet she could show you where the heat is leaking out around your doors and windows though.

What about hearing? Maybe there's a similar of temporarily encoding sounds (like resettable pits in a record/disk?).

Touch would be the most difficult, unless it's just having an awareness of pressure on her joints.

I find the technical aspects of Philomela to be quite amazing, and I love how well she's been thought out.

Yup in the burning room (which was the case in the comic) the only things she saw was the source of cool air (an open window at the top) and the man right in front of her, because he was cooler than the room and he was occupying a lot of her field of vision.

Hearing is much simpler, for it's already a pressure wave, but, she also would suck with that a bit... because of the 100 samples per second problem.

BUuuuut... then again... she is fully analogue. And anyway her brain already needs to process what she is seeing, which would need to be passed to her in some way.

So, if she is able to "see" and "understand" what she is seeing via that ultra-low-res camera she has...

And keep in mind that 64 by 64 but in analogue honeycomb is roughly equivalent to 100 by 100 in normal computer pixels because of the possibility to interpolate. Soooo... this is what she would see:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/emojis/6.....5113920512.gif

...she should be able to understand sound in pretty much the same way. Humans hear with a "resolution" of about 42 thousands packet per seconds. She only 100... buuut... Each "packet" of sound needs not be a single value. They can totally be complex packets like sine wave approximations.

hmmm... i believe the human brain already does that... for it "runs" at an (asynchronous) 200 hertz (to her 100) and already is analogue. So... i guess what she hears would be the equivalent of a cheap phone call.

Is this a dagger I see before me? Or perhaps a bowling pin, or a snowman?

Eh... 64 by 64 honeycomb analogue sight is more or less equivalent to 100 by 100 normal computer pixels, monochrome, She can tell what she has in front, if she gets close enough.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/emojis/6.....5113920512.gif

(could also use "terminator vision" buuut people might not know what i'm talking about)

Terminator vision has always been just a crappy red filter with big ass text superimposed. There never was anything "thermal" about it before terminator 3 that gave us the ridiculous performance of an actress forced to play a machine that creams herself when she tastes blood. I still hate that detail. But i digress.

https://46c4ts1tskv22sdav81j9c69-wp.....7/03/IMG-1.jpg

So. Just a red filter. And that is what her lenses do. They provide a red filter so that the 4096 gas pockets that work as her eyes can be heated evenly otherwise you would have to basically double-check how each color stands against the other.

I imposed the condition of "no wires and no flexible stuff"... because it's a mad genius. Of course her creator would gimp himself.

Maybe something happened with the prototype. I do not know (have not decided) it yet.

But the condition stays.

At 100 revolutions per second you can use matematical convolutions to send an uncompressed "stream" of analogue data of the 4096 sensors via 12 gears rotating 12 chains down her neck by rotating each chain in a specific way compared to the other 11.

Of course her current configuration means really weird stuff in regards to her eye configuration... so i believe she would also need a set of (non shown) mirrors behind her eyes to send a still image on that back screen regardless of eye rotation.

But basically... i am standing on the shoulders of giants here. There is a lot of stuff that i can access easily today that in 1920 would have needed an obsessed genius to even think of.

The tech was there. Just not "how to use it".

And computer tech offers a lot of solutions that could be "ported back" into analogue. Which is why we could (in theory) built an analytical engine today. Even though it was impossible in the 1800s.

Oh, i liked several bits and pieces... i just did not like the fact that the terminator being a woman meant everything was about sex in a teenager hormone-fueled fashion.

😓

I mean.
Terminator was always about gender roles, sure, enforcing or breaking them.
But never specifically about sex.
And if you "needed" sex, there were definitively better ways than not "horny machine" to go about it.

Oh the overall plot was incredible and i really liked it, there were several scenes i enjoyed... but ... just... the T-X being an horny machine was just out of place.

Heck, i like myself some stupid horny teenage movie sometimes.

"Hot Bot" managed to make something funny out of "horny machine that needs credit card swiping to continue functioning and shuts down the moment the credit card is removed even if that means crashing the car she is driving to save people" which... when i say it like that it sounds really dark.

But... it's... like... you need to check the tone of what you are producing.

It completely clashes with a movie that is about the despair of being unable to change the future even when you change everything else.

Terminator 3 was all about "yeah, but... you see... you can't change time, no matter how much you try... at most you can delay stuff a bit, but in the grand scheme... you changed nothing."

Sooo... dark nihilistic movie like that... and you throw in juvenile horny?

Aaanyway... enough with complaining about movies ruined by horny directors/producers/whatever-i-do-not-care-anymore-whose-fault-it-is-at-this-point.

let's get back on track.

if you need anything about Philo, let me know, if anything i anm hard to shut up which is why i try and write as little as possible.

Now, calm down.... in all likelihood, TerminatorVision was originally supplementary software created pre-Skynet for human analysts that couldn't understand what the machines were truly sensing. Skynet probably kept it as a harmless habit, but made updating it a low priority. That would explain the variety of versions we've seen even from the Model-101.

😂👍💖

i still stand by "it worked better before, not they changed it and it sucks" 🤣

thanks!

This is going to give her... it an extremely low resolution to work with, and barely any depth perception at all. I mean, that's alright; as mechanically ingenious these are, from what I understand they are made in a world that's only reached its first industrial revolution. There's a long way to go before they become androids, I wager.

Have you thought of, perhaps as a future development for these artificial beings, that instead of pins they'd have three layers of chemicals that would produce different electrical resistances based on what light hits them? To my (limited) knowledge a kind of mechanism with a magnet that "scans" the surface, where resistance is measured with the magnet, could give picture data with limited colour values.

Or keeping it 2 bit like these pins, but still using magnets; having suspended fibers of a certain magnetic material in a similar fashion to those magnetic drawing boards that react to the heat of the focused rubies to "paint" an image on the surface. Just throwing ideas out there.

What will be the real challenge will be explaining how these automatons have any form of general intelligence without resorting to transistors or magic! XD

Oh, the creator lived in the 1920s.

The whole point of Philomela is that she is "impractical".

Very beautiful to look at, but impossible to work with.

Requires high maintenance and would be unable to do much.

Things like:
• she requires 1 hour to wind and works for 1 minute.
• she can't really fly, because she weighs over 500 KG, at most she does long jumps.
• she looks pretty, but is essentially useless, due to memory constraints.
• she was built as a songbird but her voice looks nightmarish.
• she seems like she would be beautiful to see moving, but in practice her movements are very rigid and toy-like.
Because... she is not what she looks like.

The whole point of the thing is that her maker was a genius.
But he purposely restricted himself because he did not believe in "progress".
Basically... she is the product of a "mad genius"... but ... "real madness" instead of "fantasy madness".
She can do an incredible amount of stuff... for what she is... But she is still... you know... "an over elaborate toy".
The whole point of the story is that her creator fantasizes about her too much, and avoids confronting reality.
A real robot would have stuff like fabric covering up the joints where dust can get inside. It's the practical thing to do.

Philomela has none of that. In fact she has the opposite.

She has a glass window over her most sensitive clockwork. That's basically an accident waiting to happen.
Her every step is very heavy due to how little she normally has in terms of suspensions.
And if you put a glass right above what is essentially her brain and it's constantly rattled with every step...
...yeah you're making something that looks beautiful, but is only asking for trouble.
Her legs are made to switch from "anthro" to "avian".
As "human" legs they are very impractical, also they switch by kicking back the "back toe" which means she is constantly one slip away from ending up with a "bouncy step" that will throw her completely off...
It's very easy for her to miss a step and end up almost falling. Except in reality she would not be "alive", she is an expensive toy, she would not recover this easily, she would fall and damage herself.
And yes, rubies, she has a lot of those in very impractical places . 😜💖👍
Her maker literally went bankrupt for making her in the first place.
That is story canon.

Final nail piece.
Look what is used to allow her to fly.
She needed something which allowed her to move those wings at 100 beats per second.
Because that is the only way those tiny wings would allow her to "jump".
But 100 rotations per second is impossible to handle for normal steel...
...so she has a triple huge ruby joint on her back!

And that is yet another reason why the dude went bankrupt.
Also that animation where she walks, notice how "bouncy" everything is.
And... you do not want "bouncy" on rigid construction.
Sooo... what we are seeing there is that her parts constantly rattle on their joints, because of 1920 construction materials and techniques. 😂
That coupled with her basic clock of 100 rotations per second... means that to hear her functioning would be a veritable cacophony. 😂

That brings us to electricity.
The creator HATED that with a passion.
He was a WW1 veteran and he wanted to go back to 1910s.
So he made stuff that would have been the pinnacle of 1910s but without all the stuff which he considered "evil". That is: electricity.
The creator sets his house on fire because he refuses to use electric light.
Up to 1910s electricity was only used in big government buildings and public places.
He is a WW1 veteran and the government sent him back home because he had PTSD, which in 1910s was considered "he is a coward and an against his own nation".
So he sees electricity as the government influence.
He cannot get out to even get drunk and forget about what he saw in the battlefield because in 1920s alcohol was illegal.
So he has to get alcohol in seedy places filled with what he considers criminals
Plus Art Deco he considers very "fascist" because of all those ultra-straight lines and angles.

Except... this is 1920. "Fascism" is seen as a positive thing. Not for him though.

Sooo Philomela is 1850 tech improved with 1920 manufacturing and everything and pushed further by a genius mind...
...but she is the product of a flawed mind, that constrains himself to ridiculous demands.
she is "a dream" more than reality.
but the reality of her many flaws in design are what is important.
She can work, she can do stuff... but... she is far from perfect.
And she lacks "perfection" because of the ridiculous demands of her creator upon himself.
He is a mad man, therefore he hurt himself and his own creation.
And while she looks beautiful, the many things that seem impractical about her design are exactly the very thing that shows why her creator failed.

She is expensive.
Hard to maintain, and...
...while beautifully stunning in the pictures...
...she is a cacophony of sounds when she is in motion and her ability to "talk" has been called "nightmarish".
Finally her 3 eyes barely allow her to see a monocrome ultra-low-resolution picture of the world.
And she has to understand the world 1 minute at a time. With an analog mechanical computer. 😅👍💖
....yeah.

That is the reality of Philomela. That is what an obsessed genius in the 1920s could make, by refusing to use electricity and everything.

No wonder the moment she got her hands on magic she took it and said goodbye to most of her limitations.

There are 7 canon "songbirds".

In chronological order:
1) Philomela. The precursor.
2) Philekdikisi. Which is Philomela when she "reinvents" herself after acquiring magic.
3) Philafelis. A knock-off which Philekdikisi gave life to... to "thank" the man which gave her the opportunity to get her hands on magic.
4-6) Philepetra. Philonike. Philophana. The triplet of incomplete songbirds which were being manufactured with the money made after she was sold. She straight up gives them life and makes them different from herself.
Philepetra was just a clockwork brain which she straight up merges with a statue of herself.
Philonike and Philophana were in higher state of completion, and she finishes them.
But she modifies them so they would not look like her.
Philonike resembles a "bunny".
Philophana a "moth".
But they are basically... "reskinned birds".
7) Philagness. A woman who died for Philekdikisi. Philekdikisi felt she should not have. Therefore she gave her a new, artificial life.

The 7 of them are the canon ones. And they are all clockwork.

But then there is an 8th one. Which is still canon but... she is not clockwork.

8) Philenoptera.

Philenoptera is ... a special one. She was made during WW2, because Philomela's creator was unable to hide what happened.

He was forced to work for the government in the 1930s and 1940s.

And... he was forced to use electricity... and engines.

And weapons.

[edit] you know what? I'm going to make a journal entry of this 😅👍💖

Perhaps a journal entry would be good because I'm pretty sure more people are interested in this.
And quite a fascinating read this is. I thought the fire that occurred in the workshop was accidental (if the sequence of art from several months ago is of the fire you just mentioned).

So, Philomena is a mechanical computer, probably like that old unfinished mechanical calculator machine that predates Allan Turing's computer, but she gained sentience through the acquisition of magic, then proceeded to... reproduce, in a manner of speaking. Considering that you've put so much work into grounding the fantastical clockwork aspects of the automatons will you also being going deeper into the technicalities of this magic?

yeh, the fire was accidental, but because he was using open flames in a room filled with paper and a wooden house.

She's essentially a miniaturized analytical engine which is Turing complete (accidentally)

Waiting for Plan28.org to let me see some of the compiled drawings to take inspiration from.

whats that little sliver gadget?

>.>
<.<
which?

the one in her head that looks like a wind up car motor

Oh, that's just this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7l6iQcRphxU

I mean, i thought it would be funny if that is how she "ate" and it was basically just a simple thing to add there, the stuff actually comes out if you remove the stopper right below her neck and above her chest.

"Why did you put a shredder there?!"
"In case i need some document destroyed or if i want to make confetti for a party."
"It takes 1 hour to wind her and that is how you wish to spend the one minute you have?"
"Don't ask "why", ask yourself: Why not?"

i think her creator went mad at some point.....is there any other useless gadgets inside her body?

Yyyyeah. Her creator was... yeah... he had problems.

😥

BUT! She can sharpen pencils with her fingers.

😂👍💖

So there is that.

but winds down halfway through?

nah, a pencil only needs a few seconds.

😂

Roughly this same approach has been used in research to grant the blind mechanical eyesight.

A grid of photoreceptors is wired into the brain's vision centers. Connections are then adjusted until that array gives the subject a crude 'Lite Brite' image of things.

To be fair i just went with the simplest solution.

😅