The fallout franchise certainly has its fair share of brilliant iconography.
One of the most exemplary pieces of equipment to come out of the series would have to be
the RobCo Personal Information Processor, otherwise known as the Pip-boy.
Within every Fallout game, the player, alongside many other Vault-dwellers, has received one
of these for their wrist, gaining all of the advantages it brings.
The Pip-boy may be as iconic to the series as the likes of Deathclaws, super mutants
or even the Vault Boy bobbleheads….but I’m here to ask and hopefully answer a very interesting
question...is it possible?
Or more to the point, can we create a device that acts almost exactly like a Pip-boy in
our real world?
To answer that, we need to learn exactly what it’s purpose was in the Fallout universe
and what items we’d need to check off to build our very own iteration of this wrist
eye candy.
As we find out in Fallout 3, when a person has their tenth birthday in a vault, they
receive a pip boy, which is almost universal to the other iterations in the franchise.
It’s used as a sign of progression towards adulthood and having responsibilities, therefore
it helps the user organise themselves and their equipment.
It has a function to track and store any and all items the player character picks up.
Obviously this game mechanic is completely unrealistic and unless you want a giant bag
dangling from your wrist, this function of the pip-boy isn’t going to come close, in
our real world.
As for keeping track of yourself, well that’s a different story.
A group of individuals at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have delivered to
us a pill shaped device that through audio waves can track your vital signs and feedback
to a computer or other device.
You simply consume it like you would a regular pill, like for example a paracetamol and bingo,
it’s in.
The device then slowly goes down your Gastrointestinal Tract, through your internal systems and then
lies in your stomach for a few days, collecting and a distributing data about your Hearts
beat per minute along with your respiratory rate.
Honestly, it’s a little difficult to read as an outsider, however, i’m sure once you
become accustomed to reading the acoustic wave of your insides, you’ll know what’s
what and whether you’ll just straight up fall over and die in the immediate future
or you’ll live through another dreadful day in the harsh wastes.
Although it is a very useful piece of ‘wireless’ technology to keep track of your vital signs,
it’s not a permanent option since it pops out of your poop shoot after a while, so it
may not be completely viable option, but I digress.
Moving onto another very useful portion of the pip-boys abilities, mapping out areas.
In the fallout games, you can locate a local map for smaller areas, such as inside buildings
or the world map to view the whole playable area, with location marks on the places that
the pip-boy recognises you’ve been to.
There is always the option to fast travel, to said places but I think we all know that
it’s literally the game just skipping/simulating the walk for ya there.
So a map, that can track your location?
Well a simple solution would be a portable satellite GPS system, strapped to your wrist
for convenience.
A good example of this would be the Garmin eTrex 10 GPS Outdoor Handheld.
It’s simple to use, its reasonable small and guess what, you can even put in your own
locations that you want to go to or places you’ve been, so you can check map markers
off the list.
We’ve got a pill to track our health and a GPS duct taped to our wrist for mapping...not
much of a pip boy, right?
Well don’t worry your little head because Ashley Hennefer and her Space Apps team have
us covered.
They’ve been inspired by the Fallout series so much that they’ve decided to give a little
back, and try and do my job for me...but they’ve got the physical talent, knowhow and resources
to actually do it.
And so they did.
Sure it doesn’t solve our inventory problem, but that shit ain’t getting solved unless
you have a personal robot butler following you around, carrying all of your possessions,
everywhere you go.
They have however, 3d printed out a model of the pip boy, reminiscent of the 3000, and
thrown a bunch of cool shit into it.
Whilst on your wrist, it has the capability to have live mapping, showing you your surroundings,
whilst updating where you go, on the move.
Which is exactly how it functions in-game.
The only difference is you can’t click a button on this and it magically does the walking
for you...that would be just outstanding when that day comes.
They’ve also implemented a homemade but fully tested and accurate geiger counter for
those radioactive situations, we always encounter in the Fallout series.
So you won’t have to worry about venturing into that steamy yellow cave too much.
There were also plans, as you can see, to develop it further to track your vitals, alongside
ambient temperature, relative humidity, atmospheric pressure as well as object temperature using
an infrared thermometer.
They may have actually gone back to finish these touches off, but they were unable to
completely finish it during the Space Apps 48 hour development marathon and I can’t
seem to find where they are with it today.
I can tell you that they had even higher goals with their pipboy, improving on it’s in
game variant… by adding not just a radio to listen to, like in the games, but a radio
device to communicate with other wastelanders and settlements.
All of this data gathered from the sensors and for changing the frequency was fully developed
and viewed on the touch screen of an old iPhone.
The data is then distributed to and from a hub device or just a mainframe computer, through
a TI BLE Sensor, which is just a really efficient bluetooth system that doesn’t drain your
batteries too quickly.
And wa-laa, a pip boy is born.
So they’ve effectively got everything covered, with their last plans set in stone as to attempt
to configure a Bluetooth EEG Heart Rate Monitor to track your vitals and progress from there.
I think the last thing that we need to do now, is provide an alternative to the The
Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System, otherwise known as V.A.T.S.
For those who don’t know, in the majority of the fallout games, Vats has acted like
a time stop button, to allow the user to plan out their attack, and aim for a distinct body
part rather than just an enemy in general.
It has become a very useful staple gameplay mechanic for the franchise, and has only improved
as the games have evolved.
So can we stop time, or like in Fallout 4, engage in Bullet time?
No, unless you trip some serious balls on some fucking weird ass drugs, you ain’t
gonna perceive time anywhere near that slow.
What about targeting individual body parts?
Well, yes and no.
There are some automated turret systems that can target at specific body parts under certain
conditions to immobilize a target but as for use with a single human unit, no we cannot.
We can however create an outline of potential targets, which will mostly come in handy during
darker periods of your time in the wasteland.
We can do this by using a technology that has been around and used for the past few
decades but has only recently been “perfected”... that being, Thermal sensorial rifle scopes.
I know what you’re thinking, that ain’t gonna be attached to my wrist, alongside the
rest of my gear.
It is sorta the next best thing, though.
Just stick it onto your gun, aim and you're good to go, V.A.T.S DiY style.