I’ve recently been following Fallen Angel 77’s forum thread about designing your own AI it got me thinking; is there a canonical reason for AI always being one colour/shades of that one colour?
I may be wrong but all the Halo AI I can think of are only one colour: Cortana, Roland, Serina. The only one I can think of that isn’t is Blackbox from Kilo-9, but even he is arguably shades of just one colour if you consider black to be a really, really dark shade of blue (though he does occasionally sport other colours such as a red bow as a joke).
I apologise for asking this here when I already asked it on Fallen Angel 77’s thread, but I doubted many people would see it there so I created a post specifically for this question.
Limitations in UNSC holo-projection lens technology, or a base standard for the technology as a whole since it can be used for not just AI, but general projection of screens and other things as a whole. Complicated things break easily, so for something as widespread as holoprojection, you’d want a simple design with not a lot of moving parts or need for hundreds (or thousands) or different lenses for a single projector. That’s probably the best you’ll get for a in-universe explanation.
Real world wise, easier on the game engine and resource drain than rendering tiny versions of people with a full array of costume colors and skin tones.
Though honestly, why they’d ever use yellow is just beyond me. Especially Roland, he’s a military AI, with a military mindset and avatar. To choose his color to be /yellow/ knowing that the color is often associated with being a coward is a very strange choice.
And also yellow and Roland’s model in general is hideous.
Are you asking about why they are all the same color like blue or why individual AIs don’t project multiple colors at once? Apologies if I looked over any detail that answers this.
If it’s the former, Roland is yellow so that’s already an example of an AI not being blue or a shade of blue. If it’s the latter, likely because a rainbow AI would be distracting. But, as a counterpoint, Cortana in CE is green and blue which is not a distracting combo but still a combo.
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> Limitations in UNSC holo-projection lens technology, or a base standard for the technology as a whole since it can be used for not just AI, but general projection of screens and other things as a whole. Complicated things break easily, so for something as widespread as holoprojection, you’d want a simple design with not a lot of moving parts or need for hundreds (or thousands) or different lenses for a single projector. That’s probably the best you’ll get for a in-universe explanation.
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> Real world wise, easier on the game engine and resource drain than rendering tiny versions of people with a full array of costume colors and skin tones.
>
> Though honestly, why they’d ever use yellow is just beyond me. Especially Roland, he’s a military AI, with a military mindset and avatar. To choose his color to be /yellow/ knowing that the color is often associated with being a coward is a very strange choice.
>
> And also yellow and Roland’s model in general is hideous.
Looks to be the best fit, many AI’s enjoy the brilliance in simplicity too.
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> Are you asking about why they are all the same color like blue or why individual AIs don’t project multiple colors at once? Apologies if I looked over any detail that answers this.
>
> If it’s the former, Roland is yellow so that’s already an example of an AI not being blue or a shade of blue. If it’s the latter, likely because a rainbow AI would be distracting. But, as a counterpoint, Cortana in CE is green and blue which is not a distracting combo but still a combo.
I was referring to the latter. I have to say though, I would consider CE Cortana to be just green. I suppose Rainbow would be distracting, but take Roland for instance, would him being the colours of an actual pilot really be any more distracting than the other characters all being multi-coloured rather than monotone?
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> > 2533274824050480;3:
> > Are you asking about why they are all the same color like blue or why individual AIs don’t project multiple colors at once? Apologies if I looked over any detail that answers this.
> >
> > If it’s the former, Roland is yellow so that’s already an example of an AI not being blue or a shade of blue. If it’s the latter, likely because a rainbow AI would be distracting. But, as a counterpoint, Cortana in CE is green and blue which is not a distracting combo but still a combo.
>
> I was referring to the latter. I have to say though, I would consider CE Cortana to be just green. I suppose Rainbow would be distracting, but take Roland for instance, would him being the colours of an actual pilot really be any more distracting than the other characters all being multi-coloured rather than monotone?
Yeah that’s a good point. Those colors would look pretty sweet. I wonder if it was done to distinguish an AI specifically as an AI. You know, pick one or two colors and make it blatantly obvious to the gamer that they were looking at an AI and the tradition carried on to every game.
AI’s need processing power. Whether they are in the field, like Cortana, a ship, like Roland, or statistical, like Serena. If they focus on changing colors, they will become rampant quicker.
