Mar 23 2012
Something I Never Imagined Possible: A Real Life Omni Tool
I thought that yes, people could make Mass Effect armor if they were really talented, but the famous Omni Tool from the game? That would forever remain photoshopped.
But not so, the very talented Chris Myles has crafted this variant out of laser cut translucent acrylic. As you can see, it turned out about as good as you could possibly hope, and it’s even got the blade attachment for ME3.
I never really understood how that worked. Yes, you can press buttons on it as interacting with holograms is possible, but using a hologram as a sharp weapon? That doesn’t make any sense to me at all, but perhaps I’m missing some aspect of how it’s supposed to work. Not that I used it more than twice ever in the game.
More pictures of the Omni Tool below.
More Unreal Posts
Most sci fi uses the term “hologram” to mean “made of super compressed beams of light” so they can have something with a solid feel (think the holodeck in Star Trek TNG, DS9, and Voyager). A blade made of this would be very sharp and extremely hard. They are certainly not the holograms you are used to seeing in Spencer’s Gift Shop that look like mini UFOs with convex mirrors on the inside, where light is relfected through a hole in the top surface to make a hologram.
Real holograms are so complex that nobody knows for sure how they work in real life (lots of physics explaining how they SHOULD work, but no complex real examples). The reason you think of the stupid Spencer’s hologram thing is because that’s the best anyone has done with the medium, and that’s not a true hologram. It’s a valid representation of how a true hologram would look, nothing more. Believe me, one of my physics teachers in college spent half a lecture explaining this to us.
I think it’s stated in the codex that the blade is somehow hidden in the glove/wrist piece of the armour and shoots out when you want it to, but I may just be imagining things. Omni-blade in the codex.
They actually explain in the codex that the omni tool indcludes a fabrication device and that it makes the blade instantly.
Wasn’t there a Penny Arcade comic about this? Everything is explained by two words: mass effect.
Robb is correct. It’s explained in the Codex has being instantly made by the tool’s “minifacturing” capabilities.
I saw this before, it is pretty awesome. You think Mr. Myles will be willing to part with it any time soon?
this gave me a serious case of the “do wants”
And I thought making an automail gauntlet with a retractable blade for and Edward Elric costume would be tough lol.
@Korky
Actually it was an Awkward Zombie strip.
/nerd
Halo did it.
it llooks cool
A hologram is, at it’s most basic level, an interference pattern in a coherent beam of light. In sci-fi, it is whatever the author wants it to be.